


it always happens this way

by meditationonbaaal



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with some fluff, F/M, Holiday Traditions, Ice Skating, Mutual Pining, Reconnections, Secret Santa, Smut, Spiked eggnog, Ugly Christmas Sweaters, coming home, forgive me i troped it up, gingerbread house station, heavy mentions of Fred passing, mistletoe mishaps, non-murdery au, nostalgia overflow, ornament dedications, the gang's all here, tree decorating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:06:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28409709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meditationonbaaal/pseuds/meditationonbaaal
Summary: The warm glow in every window and the shadows moving behind them make her nervous. There is the same welcoming familiarity of the Andrews front porch, the pale-yellow clapboard strung with multicolored lights, but Betty realizes she hasn’t been here since the last time she saw Fred. Those shadows shifting about behind the curtains, she hasn’t seen most of them since the last time she saw Fred. Though the memory of the man remains an incorruptible comfort in her back pocket, she doesn’t know who waits for her on the other side of that door.Betty rings the doorbell but can barely hear it over WHAM! blaring from the direction of the living room. In a few moments, though, the door opens to Betty stomping her feet on the welcome mat.She shouldn’t be surprised he is here, but she is. It feels like seeing a ghost, but if that were true, he would look the same as the last time she saw him. He’s older, but it is still Jughead Jones underneath that stupid beanie.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 46
Kudos: 125
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees, Bughead Secret Santa





	1. what once was

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for @cherylstears. I know we spoke about your dark!Bughead plot (which I am still fascinated by, no joke), but I ended up taking this in a different direction. Your story about your uncle's ornament and how much it meant to you resonated with me as well as all your holiday traditions, and it took me away. There's a little bit of everything in here - angst, fluff, even a healthy dose of smut eventually - and a whole lot of nostalgia. I sincerely hope you like it :)
> 
> Also a big shout out to @lucivar who deserves a medal for dealing with my nerves while I wrote this and being kind enough to look it over for me, especially their marvelous feedback. Your sense of humor is boundless and uplifting <3
> 
> **Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire – Gustav Mahler**

There is a tree in the front window of her childhood home. Tinsel-choked branches bend beneath the weight of so many ornaments that Betty might be hard-pressed to see much of the tree beneath, but it is the absence of order that stands out the most. It lets her know the Coopers don’t live there anymore.

The hodgepodge of mismatched ornaments baffles her. Some done by the earnest hand of a distractible kindergartener and others frosted by grandma, but none of them would survive her mother’s scrutiny. Alice barely allowed Betty and Polly to hang their handmade advent calendars on the refrigerator.

A golden retriever presses his wet snout to the glass and barks in greeting. She imagines him dragging tinsel through the yard on New Year’s when dad junks the tree on the curb. Dad will find the dreads of it as late as Labor Day, folded in with the lawn clippings and untangled from the bases of the boxwoods lining the backwall, boxwoods her father planted.

Growing up, the Cooper’s living room was a cut-and-paste from the J.C. Penny catalogue circa 2000, all silver-plated brass and burgundy accents. From the ornament sets to the string lights, everything was carefully selected. From color choice to placement, it was all intentional.

When Grandma Cooper wanted to embroider stockings for Polly and Betty, Alice was so adamant they match the décor, she sent her mother-in-law a bolt of fabric, just in case she got a hankering for more handmade Christmas gifts down the road. Betty wonders if that dark red velvet dress with the cream waist ribbons is hiding in a box somewhere in her parent’s storage space in Newark.

Betty knew it was Christmastime when her mother laid the tree ribbons on the dining table. The day after Thanksgiving, Alice ironed the ribbons flat while Betty and Polly ate oatmeal mixed with leftover pumpkin pie filling.

By lunch, their father returned with the tree strapped to the top of the station wagon and a mess of unmentionable boxes in the trunk.

Hal erected the tree. Alice decorated it according to her laminated diagram. And the Cooper girls made their father an open-faced turkey sandwich with plenty of stuffing and extra gravy on the side.

Hal had the girls do the dishes while he hid all the boxes in the den. Polly and Betty speculated but never complained. The mystery was half the fun. Giddily trading guesses about what each box contained was part of the tradition.

Staring up at the blinking icicles lining the eaves, she considers that it isn’t all that different. There are different ornaments and different lights and different traditions, but it is still a family on the other side of that window.

Cooper Christmas appeared regimented from the outside, but Betty finds herself missing these traditions now. There was a warm sense of security in their predictability. She supposes a part of it was having somewhere to be, and not just be but also belong. Even now, she half expects her mother to open the red door wearing that apron with the tiny red and green Christmas trees. Her father would be in the living room tending the fire. Polly would be punching out bells and sprigs of holly and gingerbread men with the ancient metal cookie cutters handed down by Grandma Cooper.

During Betty’s sophomore year of college, her parents sold the house and stopped hosting Christmas. Instead, they made a new tradition for themselves. In St. Croix.

Betty spent one Christmas with Polly and vowed to never do it again. She sends gifts to her nieces and nephew, but Betty will never endure another ‘grace’ with her sister’s ‘commune’ again. To this day, she thinks they put something in the wine because on occasion, for a few seconds, the lights don’t look quite right.

Since then, Betty spent the last four Christmases alone. When her parents moved away, she didn’t feel she had a reason to go back to Riverdale anymore, so she immersed herself in her education. Sacrificing her social life to her studies, she didn’t have many friends in college. She sank so deeply into her studies that even when the holidays came around, she couldn’t afford time away. The plan took precedence, always. She figured she could start celebrating again when she finally got _there_.

This is the first time in years she can remember having any free time. It ends on Monday, so when Archie called her, she jumped at the chance, knowing how much harder it would be soon. She didn’t realize how much she needed the chance to be somewhere until she was standing in front of the house on Elm Street, the one with the red door.

Yet, that isn’t the only reason she came, remembering, her gaze shifting further down the lane to the house next door.

It keeps her boots shuffling through the unshoveled snow. Smiling to herself, she notices someone recently cleared the walk up to the door. She imagines his red-tipped nose and cheeks clashing with the sweaty mop of hair on his head. 

The warm glow in every window and the shadows moving behind them make her nervous. There is the same welcoming familiarity of the Andrews front porch, the pale-yellow clapboard strung with multicolored lights, but Betty realizes she hasn’t been here since the last time she saw Fred. Those shadows shifting about behind the curtains, she hasn’t seen most of them since the last time she saw Fred. Though the memory of the man remains an incorruptible comfort in her back pocket, she doesn’t know who waits for her on the other side of that door.

Betty rings the doorbell but can barely hear it over _WHAM!_ blaring from the direction of the living room. In a few moments, though, the door opens to Betty stomping her feet on the welcome mat.

She shouldn’t be surprised he is here, but she is. It feels like seeing a ghost, but if that were true, he would look the same as the last time she saw him.

“Didn’t think I kept you waiting that long,” he teases. “No need to throw a tantrum.”

“I was getting snow off my boots,” she explains, tapping her toes on the mat once more to shake off the rest.

The corner of his mouth curls up, and the small smile gives her a flash of that ephemeral dimple at the corner of his right eyebrow. Even though he could not possibly control it, Betty always found something slightly derisive yet endearing about it, and that hits her hard. She hasn’t seen Jughead Jones since high school, yet he still wears that stupid beanie. Her ghost theory comes back, but then she takes in the giant felt Rudolph ironed on the front of his sweater, the red nose with the cheery blinking light. It is something he never would have been caught dead wearing back in high school.

One thing the same; another different. She considers the shifting Tetris of her own personality and tastes and wonders what he sees now with one cursory glance. What is the same? What is new? 

“I was kidding,” he says, extending a hand to her.

She hesitates to take it. His hand is warm, almost feverish, but that is probably because hers is frozen. His brow furrows, staring at their hands like he doesn’t quite know how they got there. Sensing a misstep, Betty slowly withdraws hers, sticking it into her coat pocket to preserve some of that residual warmth.

Jughead chuckles. “Your bag,” he clarifies, pointing at the carry-on slung on her shoulder. “I was going to take it up for you. You’re probably hungry.”

“No, thank you, I can do it,” Betty declines politely, hugging the bag against her body.

His smile doesn’t recede. “Yes, you’re fully capable,” he agrees. “I’m telling you you don’t have to.”

He sizes her up and then steps aside. “Come on, you’re cold,” he urges, beckoning her inside.

As soon as she crosses the threshold, she feels his hand guide the bag off her shoulder and onto his own. It is so smooth and effortless that she doesn’t have time to protest before his hands are on her shoulders, fingers curling beneath her coat. It is a casual closeness she would never expect from Jughead Jones, not after nearly seven years.

“Jughead,” she scolds gently, scanning the foyer for any witnesses to this uncharacteristic act.

Jughead ignores her, helping her slide her arms from the sleeves. He shakes off the snow and hangs it on the hall tree. She thinks she catches him make a quick personal assessment in the mirror, but when he turns around, she pretends to be interested in the coats.

Guessing the guestlist by the assortment of jackets, Betty doesn’t hear him cross the foyer.

“You still remember how to find the kitchen,” he teases, holding onto the banister and swinging his body toward the stairs.

Her father would complain if she or Polly did that, argued it loosened the railing over time, but Jughead looks so painfully boyish and young swaying toward her that Betty thinks she might choke on the nostalgia she gets just from seeing his face, from being in this foyer again after so many years and everything looking exactly the same. 

Betty nods, sticking her cold hands under her armpits. The commotion she hears from the kitchen makes her hesitate. Time and distance keep stuffing her nostalgia down her throat and piling anxiety on top.

Jughead backs up onto the first step. “I recommend the summer sausage, which always felt out-of-season or ill-named as far as Christmas charcuterie goes, but I’m not complaining.”

She cannot count how many times his suggestions rolled into unsolicited opinions, and just like that the tug-of-war continues. The appearance of his old habit brings up her deep-seated urge to correct him on the origin of the name summer sausage, but it also soothes some of the anxiety with another dose of schmaltz.

He turns to go upstairs, and Betty meanders down the hall, casually reminiscing over the old family photos hung on the wall. Fred was always so good at getting planned group shots to look candid, or it’s that the Andrews never had to fake it.

She is halfway to the kitchen when, “Oh, and Betty.” She stops and turns, spotting Jughead leaning over the railing. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” she offers automatically but feels ridiculous as soon as she hears him clipping up the stairs. The sentiment doesn’t begin to encompass the full extent of her feelings toward seeing Jughead Jones again.

* * *

Archie pounces on her first. When he sweeps her up into a giant bear hug, it comforts her to know he still doesn’t know his strength. Though the compression on her ribs borders on painful, she notices he smells the same, boy sweat and Old Spice and those undernotes that will always be distinctly Archie. She feels the scratch of his sweater and recognizes it as one of Fred’s old ugly ones, the collar fraying.

“Betty, you made it,” he cheers next to her ear.

As soon as he lets her down, Veronica’s arm slides across her shoulders, pulling her into a quick heart hug while she holds her wine glass out to the side. The rose sloshes dangerously against the sides, but Veronica doesn’t notice, smooching Betty on the cheek.

“Betty-kins, you’re here,” she greets happily. Her lips must leave behind a big plum pucker because Veronica winces and licks her thumb, smudging it away.

“You must be starving. How long were you stuck on that train?” Veronica guides her toward the platters of food crowding the island.

Archie gives the spread a funny look, like he doesn’t quite trust it, but then something clicks. “Shoot, the turkey,” he exclaims, hurrying out of the kitchen.

Betty smiles, following his train of thought. Fred smoked a turkey every year. Archie must have one in the smoker out back.

“Here, here,” Veronica cajoles, lifting a blue-veined chunk of unnamed cheese to Betty’s mouth. “Taste. It’ll make you feel closer to God.”

Betty opens her mouth on command, and the intense flavor is unexpected but exquisite.

Veronica pumps her eyebrows in victory. “Right? You’ll never taste another Roquefort like it. Daddy had wheels flown in for his party,” she explains, popping a piece for herself and chirping triumphantly, “I skimmed one.”

Betty fiddles with a water cracker and wonders if Hiram Lodge would notice a two-hundred-dollar wheel of cheese missing.

Veronica waves her hand at the spread. “Eat, eat,” she urges. “What do you want to drink?” She offers her wine for a sample. “I have this rose, but since you’re finally here, maybe it’s time to break out the good stuff?”

While Betty mulls the wine, Veronica crouches and opens one of the lower cabinets, revealing a hidden stash of holiday spirits.

“But, V, this is really good,” Betty contends, taking another sip of rose.

Veronica agrees it isn’t bad, as far as Napa Valley roses go. Betty locates the open bottle to pour herself a glass when someone bumps into her shoulder.

“See how she hoards the fancy stuff to herself. Some things never change.”

Betty’s face feels like it splits in two. She throws her arms around his neck, practically squealing with delight. “You came,” she marvels into Kevin Keller’s neck. She wasn’t sure he would with his commitments in London.

Kevin hugs her back, and it feels so good, the familiarity of his palm rubbing circles between her shoulder blades. When she pulls away, he explains, “It took some finagling. We’re in the middle of production, but they gave me a few days. I fly out tomorrow.”

Betty shakes her head in disbelief, her chest cramping with too much joy. “It’s so good to see you.”

He gives her shoulder a fond squeeze, but then leans in and whispers, “Your other favorite is here. Did you see?”

Feeling her cheeks grow hot, Betty shoots a nervous glance at Veronica.

“You saw him,” he concludes easily. “Filled out nicely, right?”

Veronica knocks some bottles over and curses. Her skirt may be too tight for crouching like that. Betty uses it as an excuse to offer to help. Kevin gets the hint, but she can tell he’s only letting it go for the moment.

Veronica brushes Betty off, assuring everyone she has it under control.

“There’s eggnog,” Kevin offers tepidly. “Reggie spiked the batch, but I guarantee it will fight back later,” he quips, clinking his glass of it with Veronica’s wine. “Which is why Veronica needs to save us all from its wrath and soon.”

Veronica bumps her head on the underside of the cabinet. “There is a time and a place for the good stuff, Kevin Keller,” she gripes, reading the label on one of her secret bottles. “Seeing as how I am the provider of the good stuff, I decide the when and the where,” she declares, standing and brandishing the bottle at them while rubbing the back of her head.

Kevin makes a face at his eggnog and places it on the counter. He starts searching drawers for a corkscrew. “I’m just surprised you agreed to wear the sweater.”

“Of course,” Veronica maintains. “For solidarity.” However, the bottom of Veronica’s ugly sweater choice almost reaches the hem of the black cocktail dress she wore underneath it.

Kevin chuckles, turning his scrutiny on Betty. “Speaking of ugly Christmas sweaters, Betty, my god, did you steal that off an old cat lady.”

Betty pulls her sweater out from her stomach. The mishmash of applique kittens with Santa hats is busy. One of them looks like it just drank Reggie’s eggnog. “The theme was ugly sweaters,” she defends, laying her palm over the sickest kitten like she means to comfort it.

“She’s going to win the contest,” Kevin bets, producing the corkscrew. He manages to look dapper in his own sweater with the charming fleet of penguins marching across his chest.

Veronica pulls a few more varietals out of the cabinet and puts a couple whites in the fridge. “Kevin, don’t tease Betty about her sweater. That’s low hanging fruit, even for you,” she admonishes, handing him a bottle to open.

“True. At least she doesn’t have bangs,” he says, twisting the corkscrew, the cork squeaking.

Veronica tucks a dark lock behind her ear, slightly shorter than the rest of her hair but styled to look like a framing layer. “They grew out just fine,” she maintains. “B, you thought the bangs were okay, right?”

Betty blanks. She wants to come to Veronica’s defense, but she never saw them. She imagines Veronica posted photos on her Instagram, but Betty hasn’t updated her own in months.

It’s not that she lost touch with Veronica. They talk on the phone every few months or so, but now Betty realizes she hasn’t spoken to Veronica since the beginning of the year. She hasn’t seen her in much longer. She wants to defend herself, that she was busy with her last semester of grad school, but to be honest, if Veronica didn’t call her, Betty rarely reached out herself. To make matters worse, it’s not like Betty has been especially occupied since graduating this summer.

“They look fine, V,” Betty assures her, hiding her guilt behind a cabinet as she goes looking for clean wine glasses.

She tells herself it is okay. No one can be expected to keep up with everything, and it was just bangs, bad bangs, too by Kevin’s estimation. She shouldn’t feel bad for missing out on a hairstyling gaff.

“I see you still have the exact same haircut you’ve had since middle school,” Kevin notes, popping the cork on one of the bottles.

Betty smooths her palm across the top of her head, feels the tightness of the tie holding her ponytail in place. “It’s functional,” she argues. “At one point, I considered cutting it all off.” When she was accepted into the academy, she thought it would be more practical. If she liked it, she would keep it that way.

The look of sheer horror on Veronica and Kevin’s face should be comical, but given the context, it is unsettling.

Kevin beckons for Betty’s glass and pours her a very large baby. “Are you having a Britney Spears moment?” he ventures cautiously.

“What? No!” She takes a sip of wine, realizing she hasn’t told anyone yet. “I was accepted into the NYPD police academy,” she announces.

Kevin smiles proudly, but then he says, “Betty, don’t cut your hair. With your shape, it won’t work.”

Betty sighs, taking a bigger sip of wine. “Duly noted.” Shaking her head, she grabs a clean plate off the stack on the counter and turns to the spread.

Kevin breaks character and jostles her in for a hug. “I’m kidding. Betty, that’s fantastic. Congratulations.”

Veronica gives her a heart hug from behind, echoing Kevin’s sentiment. “Also seconding Kevin on shaving your head, but if it’s what you need to do,” she adds, trailing off.

Betty gently extricates herself from the embrace with a humble _thanks_. Time and distance have not diminished this, she considers, some of her doubts waning.

A bang resounds from the backyard followed by Archie shouting for Veronica. The brunette curses and clips out the backdoor.

Kevin looks heavenward, and then retrieves the fire extinguisher from beneath the kitchen sink. “Let’s hope he kept his eyebrows this time,” he quips before chasing Veronica.

Betty would go to check, but it might be too many pans on the stove.

Instead, she piles a small plate with some charcuterie and heads for the living room because she wants to the see the tree.

Unlike the Coopers, the Andrews were more informal and homier with their decorations. Betty loved their tree especially. Nearly every ornament had a story behind it. There was a tangible history behind the Andrews’ Christmas while the only story behind the Coopers’ was often no more than a catalogue number.

Betty’s plate almost collides with the body appearing out of nowhere.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Reggie Mantle smarms above her.

“Reggie,” she greets half-heartedly. She knew he was going to be here. She just thought she would have a few drinks in her before she had to interact with him. The thought makes her take a sip of wine.

Reggie takes a long swig of eggnog, eyeing her over his glass. Killing the nog, he smacks his mouth, wiping the froth off his upper lip. “No eggnog for you, mini-Coop?”

“Too much dairy,” she excuses, taking a step back.

“Uh,” he warns suddenly, and then a smirk fights its way across his face. “Oh no.”

“What?”

He throws a meaningful glance at the ceiling. Betty almost groans out loud when she spots the mistletoe taped to the moulding.

“You know what that means,” he goads, stepping toward her.

Betty uses her plate as a buffer. “I’m not going to kiss you, Reggie.”

His face as sober and intense as she has ever seen it, he tells her, “The first refusal is five years of bad luck.”

He lets that sink in, committing to the bit. At least, she thinks it’s a bit. The moment it gets creepy, his mouth splits into a shit-eating grin.

Betty smiles tightly in return. “I’ll take my chances. Excuse me, please.” She dismissively taps his chest with her plate, nudging him out of the way.

She doesn’t make it to the living room, though, instantly distracted by the setup on the dining table. She can hardly believe Archie included it this year, but the gingerbread house station was always a staple at the Andrews’ Christmas party.

Setting her plate and glass on the table, she notes someone began construction, but one of the panels collapsed. She shoves a few pieces of cheese in her mouth and then reaches for the icing bag. Carefully squaring the panel with the others, she seals the repair with icing. She bets Veronica baked the gingerbread. The panels aren’t uniform, so it won’t hold long, but she mortars in some KitKats in the corners for extra support. It should hold until the icing dries.

“He did it every year.”

Betty looks up to see Jughead admiring her work from the other side of the dinner table. Her first thought, thanks to Kevin, is that yes, Jughead Jones filled out quite nicely. By the flannel around his waist and the rips in the knees of his jeans, she muses that despite the extra definition, his aesthetic remains much the same. She recalls he wore something so similar that night, too, when she learned how tight that knot was around his hips. She looks away when he unwraps a mini candy cane and sticks it in his mouth, grinning at her.

“He did,” she concedes fondly, remembering Fred’s enthusiasm for constructing the most elaborate gingerbread houses.

Fred would encourage every partygoer to contribute something to the house, even if it were as small a detail as a gumdrop above the doorway. Of course, Fred did most of the foundational work, making sure all the panels fit neatly with adequate support. He built them the same way he built real houses – to last. Even if they ended up devoured by the next morning, what was important was that there was a little piece of everybody in the final product.

Jughead scowls at the bowl of necco wafers. “What monster allowed these?”

Betty shakes her head in disappointment. “Fred wouldn’t stand for it.”

She reaches across the table and grabs the bowl, turning and stashing it in one of the sideboard drawers. “There will be no defiling the gingerbread house tonight,” she swears, crossing her heart.

Jughead chuckles, almost spitting up the candy cane into one of the bowls.

“What should we do for the roof?” Betty wonders, perusing the bowls of frosted gumdrops and Hershey’s kisses.

Jughead uses his tongue to shift the candy cane to the other side of his mouth, the candy clicking against his teeth. He pulls it out long enough to suggest, “How about the nonpareils?”

He even pronounced it correctly. His high school French had been a step above unintelligible. Betty shelves her respect, though, conceding they do look like snow-powdered tiles. “It will be less colorful than the neccos but tastier.” She ices one onto the roof, and then looks to Jughead for approval.

“Perfect,” he concurs before biting off the end of the candy cane. She feels that snap in her gut. “This is more fun than I remembered.”

“Probably because you were always too distracted by the turkey,” Betty teases, carefully applying more nonpareil tiles.

“Fair enough,” he concedes, crunching on the last of his candy cane. “Speaking of turkey, did Archie say if it was done yet?”

“I think he went to go check on it earlier,” Betty supposes, staggering the next layer of chocolate tiles. “There might’ve been an incident with the smoker, though.”

When Jughead doesn’t move to go see for himself, she looks and finds him very focused on constructing little marshmallow men, splicing them together with pretzel sticks up their spongy middles. He catches her watching and smiles self-consciously. “I should contribute first,” he figures. “The turkey will be my reward.”

All Betty can think is that he still smiles like that, like he’s a little ashamed someone saw him do it.

With a small, shy nod, Betty parrots him, “Fair enough.”

They work on their respective parts in silence for a bit. Jughead weaves tiny licorice scarves around their necks, and Betty leaves some overlap with the last layer of nonpareils. The silence feels intentional on his part, and she expects at any moment he will bring it up.

When he starts talking, Betty’s shoulders automatically cinch around her spine, but all he says is, “These always remind me of that big church in Russia.”

The tension in her back loosens, and mildly amused, Betty ventures, “Saint Basil’s?”

He shrugs. “When I was younger, I thought it was edible, too.”

Betty snorts. “The church?”

“Yeah,” Jughead confesses, unashamed. She imagines an eight-year-old Jughead climbing onto one of the onion domes and trying to take a bite out of it. “Blame it on Fred’s gingerbread houses.”

He tosses a handful of Red Hots in his mouth, and Betty nags warmly, “You’re eating all the building materials.”

Jughead scoffs, but his next smile is good-natured. “There’s enough candy here to keep Willy Wonka in the black, Betts.”

It’s like a little dart in her heart, hearing that nickname again. Only Archie and Jughead call her _Betts_. She cannot remember the last time she heard it before now, but she recalls he whispered it to her that night, too. _Goddamnit._

Jughead arranges the snowmen on the lawn at random. When he plants a black licorice gumdrop on the head of one, Betty asks if that’s his, pointing at the beanie he has never been seen without since they were six years old.

Jughead pokes the little marshmallow version of himself. “Fred always said there should be a piece of ourselves in this house,” he recalls, staring at the congregation of tiny candy snowmen.

He smiles, but there’s something guilty about it. “I was always more interested in eating the candy rather than contributing.”

Betty opens her mouth to quickly disabuse him of that notion, that Fred would never hold something like that over him, over anybody, but then his gravity melts into a smirk.

“There, I contributed. Now, my reward.” He tips an imaginary hat and takes his leave.

Peeking over her shoulder, she watches him saunter up to the kitchen island where Archie has just finishing carving the turkey. It looks like Archie still has his eyebrows, so whatever happened outside must not have been too calamitous.

She finds herself staring at Jug’s back a moment too long, kicking herself and looking away. He didn’t bring it up, so he obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. Which is just as well. It happened almost seven years ago.

Betty pops one of the leftover nonpareils in her mouth. It clashes with the cheese. She grabs the sieve out of the powdered sugar bowl and sprinkles the scenery, dusting the frosting trees and tootsie roll nurse logs in a fresh layer of sugar snow.

Participating in its construction was important to Fred, but she would have told Jug it wasn’t just about contributing. To Fred, eating the gingerbread house was equally as important because consumption was also participation. The only reason Fred set up the station every year was for everyone’s enjoyment. How someone decided to enjoy it was dealer’s choice, but the only thing Fred cared about was that it was enjoyed.

Gathering her plate and the remainder of her wine, Betty ventures into the living room to finally get a look at the tree.

Cozied up beneath a blanket Betty bets she brought from home, Cheryl wiggles her fingers at her. “Cousin Betty, you came.”

Curled up next to her distant cousin, Toni gives a small wave.

Betty spots the giant rock. Yet another thing she missed this year. She received the invitation, but it was finals week, and she had exams to proctor. By the imperious arch in Cheryl’s brow, Betty can guess the _La Crueset_ was not an acceptable apology for missing her cousin’s wedding, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Betty never received a thank you card.

“Everyone knows how busy you are,” Cheryl says, each syllable crisp and scathing. She showcases her own ring on top of the scarlet chenille throw.

Betty admits the optics aren’t good. How could she make time for the Andrews’ Christmas Party but deign to miss her cousin’s wedding? Unlike Cheryl, though, Betty’s ambitions have deadlines that she cannot shelve whenever she wants.

And yet, she still feels she missed something that was far more unmissable than Cheryl’s and Toni’s wedding.

Archie understood. He didn’t hold it over her. He was Fred’s son; he wasn’t like that, and he knew that the opportunity Betty had was something that only came along once or twice. Even while she was enduring what seemed like a million strictly scheduled tests of mettle, she felt she was missing something vitally important. _You’re here now_ , she reminds herself tersely, but it doesn’t quite stick. 

Cheryl tips her mug of hot cocoa back and forth to watch the tiny marshmallows float in the small waves. Betty bets there is maple rum in that concoction because there’s more to the blush on her cousin’s cheeks. “I received an – interesting card from your parents,” the redhead intimates.

Betty sets her plate and wine glass on the coffee table, bracing herself for Cheryl’s pointed remarks about the Cooper’s new Christmas cards.

She received the same cringeworthy card. The photo of her floral-shirted parents in front of their new bungalow blazed across the front was campy enough without the tacky tropical accents. Her mother included a newsletter, which mostly detailed the recent renovations and a resolved feud with their neighbor about fence lines. Alice even added some blurbs about Betty and Polly. That was how Betty found out Polly was pregnant – again.

“It’s my first time seeing it for myself,” Cheryl says, feigning awe.

Betty entertains her. “Seeing what?” It feels like the start of a bad knock-knock joke. Not the cheesy bad.

“Folie a deux. Is it common for couples to sync their midlife crises?”

Betty knows it is best not to enable her further, so she tells Cheryl she will pass along her sentiments. She doesn’t miss the sympathetic look Toni offers.

“Are you staying over tonight?” Betty asks, collecting her wine glass and taking a seat on the opposite sofa arm.

Toni smooths her hand across the chenille throw. Her wife may claim she gets claustrophobic in small spaces, but Toni knows she just likes her own space too much. “No, but when do you have to be back in the city?”

Betty must report to the academy on Monday.

“Have dinner with us,” Toni offers. “Once before you leave.”

“No less than five courses,” Cheryl demands, skimming one polished red nail along the lip of her mug. 

“How about the day after Christmas?” Betty suggests. Both Toni and Cheryl look pleased with her answer.

Reggie flops onto the sofa, jostling the cozy couple. Betty quietly moves to the loveseat.

Reggie balances an overloaded plate of turkey and cheeses on his washboard stomach and asks if Betty still believes in cooties.

“No, just herpes,” Cheryl jabs right for the jugular.

Even Betty felt that one, cringing into her wine.

“It was the clap,” Reggie corrects Cheryl, covering up his embarrassment with the fact it was also three years ago.

Toni asks Cheryl if she’s eaten yet. When her wife fails to confirm or deny, Toni liberates herself from the coziness to go make Cheryl a plate before her low blood sugar verbally eviscerates the rest of them.

Veronica and Archie pass her on the way in, telling her to hurry so they can start secret santa. “See if you can tear Jughead away from the turkey while you’re at it,” Veronica adds. “Oh, and we opened another bottle of that rose, if you’re interested.”

Archie plops himself down near the base of the giant Andrews Christmas tree. When Veronica produces a santa hat hidden in the liquor cabinet and tugs it onto Archie’s head, Betty immediately thinks about Fred and feels the tightness behind her eyes.

Archie looks fifteen years younger in that moment, staring up at Veronica in awe that she remembered. The brunette skims her fingers along her boyfriend’s jawline with a tenderness that chafes away Archie’s earlier cheer. It leaves behind something raw and still bleeding that stops Betty’s heart with guilt.

“Fits like a glove,” Veronica muses, bending and planting a kiss on his cheek. It is like she is laying a bandage over it, and it works like that, like real world magic. A patch of joy sewing up that momentary breach of unimaginable grief as Archie places an affectionate hand on her hip and leans into the kiss.

When Veronica stands, Archie flips his head, whipping the cotton ball to the other side of his face, and his girlfriend smudges away another kiss mark with a smile.

Kevin wanders in and takes the seat next to Betty. He sees the santa hat on Archie’s head and grabs Betty’s hand, partially for himself, partially for the way she skates her knuckle beneath her eyes.

“Arch, are we starting secret santa now?” Betty asks out loud. Her present is still upstairs in her bag.

Archie perks up, the wattage returned to his smile.

Veronica grumbles, “Yeah, as soon as Toni peels Jughead off the turkey.”

“I’ll go get my present,” Betty says, but Archie gives her a confused look.

Reaching behind himself, he produces the present she carefully wrapped yesterday. “This is yours, right?” She knows it is hers by the silvery blue metallic paper and perfectly curled cream ribbons.

_That little snoop_ , she grouses in her head, narrowing her eyes at Jughead as he gets poked and prodded by Toni into the living room. He’s already sporting a food baby, too, which makes her doubt the possibility of seconds. If it weren’t time for one of Fred’s favorite traditions, she would drag him back into the dining room and chew him out.

Betty smiles tightly. “Guess I forgot I’d already brought it down,” she supposes. When Jughead takes a spot on the floor between Kevin and Betty, she resists the urge to shove his beanie over his face.

“Okay, now that we’re all together,” Veronica chirps, bringing everyone’s attention back. “Archie, play Santa.”

Archie beams back at everybody. He decides the present in his hand is good enough to be the first one and crawls across the floor, depositing it on Toni’s lap.

Veronica swore the process was entirely unbiased, that Archie acted as witness to the selection process, but even if it wasn’t, Betty was glad to get Toni. If she’d gotten Reggie, she would have ended up getting him some month club thing. Choosing one, though, would’ve been a crapshoot.

The look on Toni’s face when she unwraps the present ends up very worth it. “I’ve needed a new external flash since forever.” She also appreciates the small addition of a camera cleaning kit. “Thanks, Betty.”

Betty wonders if maybe there is never too much time and distance. People just need to be willing to take a step forward.

As Archie plays Santa for the rest of the group, this sentiment gains momentum in Betty’s mind. So many times she wants to reach down and touch Jughead’s shoulder in that spot he used to touch her. They didn’t have to talk about _it_ , but she hopes maybe they could at least press refresh. His easiness towards her so far makes her hopeful. It surprises her how easily she slots herself back in here, with these people, in this place that used to be the center of her world, but she never musters the courage to touch him back. 

“Wasn’t there a dollar limit?” Jughead grouches at one point, scowling at Cheryl when Kevin unwraps a Burberry scarf.

“Everyone knows that’s mostly a guideline, you hobo,” she returns, slipping a chunk of Roquefort worth ten dollars into her mouth.

Veronica ends up wildly flouting the dollar limit, too, by gifting Cheryl a pair of Gucci sunglasses in her signature red. It bolsters Betty’s suspicion that the game was rigged.

However, as each gift reveals even more tender thoughtfulness for the giftee, Betty weighs the subtle wisdom of Veronica’s manipulations.

Jughead peels back the funnies to three sets of suspenders in different prints – donuts, hamburgers, and bacon.

“So your students will take you seriously this year,” Kevin teases.

Jughead snorts. “Ha ha. Thank you, Kevin.” But Betty can tell he likes them by the little flush on the back of his neck because he hasn’t been drinking.

It reminds Betty that she hasn’t gotten the chance to ask him what he’s been up to all these years. She feels like she has spent the last seven years in outer space because even Kevin seems to know more about him. 

They continue to go around unwrapping their gifts. His knees skidding across the rug, Archie crawls around like a little kid to deposit each gift to the recipient.

Archie gets Reggie a football phone. Kevin argues no one has a landline anymore, but Reggie vows to get one just so he can use it.

Reggie gifts Veronica a face cream. Veronica is speechless, which is a first.

“It’s the kind you like, right?” Reggie checks.

Veronica shakes her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you remember that.” Reggie shrugs like it is no big deal.

Toni gives Archie boxing wraps and what looks like a brand-new pair of gloves, a very nice pair. “They were my father’s,” she explains. “Some recruiter gave them to him, but he got hurt and had to quit. I hope you don’t mind that they’re hand-me-down.”

Archie stuffs his hands into each glove. “Are you kidding? These are Winning’s. I don’t think I can accept these, Toni.”

She scoffs. “They’ve been collecting dust in a closet for the last decade. They should go to somebody who will get good use out of them.”

Archie practically radiates his gratitude. He looks like he wants to try them out right this moment on the punching bag in the garage, but Veronica gives him a small warning look. So, he sets them aside and reaches for the final gift, a small brown paper package stuffed between some branches.

Jughead stares at the ground when Archie hands the gift to Betty over his shoulder. The flush on the back of his neck grows darker. Betty figures out why when she rips the brown paper off to reveal a first edition _Beloved_.

“Jug.”

He rubs the back of his neck and finally looks up at her, propping his elbow against Kevin’s thigh and twisting his body towards her. “I don’t know if you ever replaced your copy,” he explains, indicating the book in her lap.

The book that happened to be on her bedside table that night. The worn copy that was virtually disintegrating from overuse. She had to tape the cover back on, and the binding was pretty much entirely duct tape. Seated on the edge of her bed afterwards, he nudged the book toward him. She was studying the moles on his bare back, the shine of sweat beading down the nape of his neck.

_It’s clearly beloved_ , he joked, smirking over his shoulder at her in that sly way that made her stomach dip.

“I never did,” she admits, touching his arm. “So, thank you.”

That same smirk graces his face, and Betty feels it all over again, the soreness. Sore in too many ways. The phantom soreness between her legs, sure, but sore in her mind, too. Sore that she was that girl, the foolish one that falls in love with a guy after she loses her virginity to him.

Betty sets the book aside and says she’s going to get more wine. Veronica tells her she put a couple whites in the fridge, and they should be chilled by now. “Bring out a few bottles would you, darling?”

  
She rests her forehead against the cool stainless steel of the refrigerator door. Fred must have upgraded the appliances recently because this isn’t the Clinton-era Frigidaire she remembers.

Betty didn’t know he was going to be here, but she should have expected as much. Archie and Veronica collected RSVPs well enough in advance, giving her plenty of time to gain some nerve and ask, but she never did. A part of her didn’t want to know, but it was willful ignorance. If she were braver, she would have saved herself some of this embarrassment. Not because she wouldn’t have come, but because then she would have had time to sort herself out before seeing him again.

Maybe a part of her hoped it had changed.

After it happened, she told herself it was normal to feel attached to him. He was her first, and more, he was her first choice. That was what made it special for her. She chose him. He was one of her oldest friends, and she trusted him, and to her, that was worth more than romantic love. The lack of it wouldn’t cheapen the act.

Throughout high school, Veronica and Cheryl championed virginity as a social construct, a glorification that should be abolished. Still, Betty didn’t want to have regrets about it. She didn’t want to come out of it with nasty rumors or a bitter breakup. She figured with Jughead that wouldn’t be a problem.

She couldn’t see the forest for the trees, though because while she focused on minimizing external social risk, she completely ignored the internal ones. It wasn’t that she regretted it. It was the exact opposite. What she didn’t expect was the vestigial emotional attachment that latched itself to her after the act, but she figured like anything else, it would fade.

For Betty, sex and love did not necessarily have to go together. She could enjoy sex without love. Yet, dating other people, men, women, it made no difference. He had become the litmus test with which she judged all the rest. Not because it was earth shattering or their friendship before they had sex was especially meaningful, but because there was something in her that resonated with him so easily. She knew she would feel comfortable asking him because she expected she would be comfortable with it being him, but she never anticipated how much of that friendly familiarity would translate into physical compatibility.

She never predicted that in seven years her feelings would remain unchanged, but they did. It isn’t just nostalgia that makes her insides feel glowy when he smiles at her like that. The nausea she feels now cannot be entirely attributed to the large plate of strong-smelling cheeses behind her because unlike her, perhaps to him it was just a casual romp between friends seven years ago and nothing more.

Opening the refrigerator door, she feels the presence first. When the hand lands on her shoulder, she moves quickly, getting a grip on the meat of his hand and ducking beneath his arm, taking the hand with her. Reggie’s face lands hard on the platter of fancy cheeses.

“Whoa, Jesus, mercy,” he gasps, fig jam in his hair.

“Have you ever been tased, Reggie?” Betty inquires.

“Kinky.”

She puts more pressure on his shoulder joint, and he hisses. Betty shakes her head. “If you think a guy seizing in a pool of his own piss is sexy.”

“Oh.”

“It’s bad manners to sneak up on a lady,” Betty scolds, twisting his arm a little farther.

“Yes, yes,” Reggie gets out, wincing. “Uncle.”

Betty releases his hand and returns to the open fridge door, retrieving the unopened bottles. He pushes himself out of the cheese, skimming his hand through his sticky hair. Betty takes pity, dampening a dish towel and offering it to him.

“Guess it’d be a bad time to point out the mistletoe, huh,” he mentions, indicating the sprig taped to the fridge door.

Betty sighs, ripping it off the door. “How many of these do you have?”

“I had more,” Reggie admits. “But, Jug found most of them and threw them away.”

“Jug did?”

He nods, looking like a scolded puppy. Betty steps on the trash pedal and tosses the mistletoe in the bin. “You know this is an outdated, misogynistic tradition, right?”

“It is?” Reggie wonders, sounding genuinely baffled.

“Yeah, most girls don’t like being forced to kiss someone.”

Eyebrows raised, Reggie lets that sink in. “It was something we always did in our house, so I guess I didn’t really think about it like that.”

“Well, now you know.” She shoves a bottle of white wine into his hands. “Now help me carry these back to the party.”

When they get back to the living room, Reggie quickly offers to refresh everyone’s glasses, politely suggesting Betty relax and let him play waiter. Betty considers it an acceptable apology, holding her glass to him for a refill. When she moves to return to the loveseat, she sees Kevin talking at Jughead, but then catches Jughead watching her and Reggie. Their eyes meet, and he hastily looks away, responding to a detail from Kevin’s story.

She almost takes the open spot next to Cheryl and Toni, but that would put Reggie next to Jughead, which might be too volatile a combination given Reggie’s increasing drunkenness. So, she retakes her seat, making sure her knee doesn’t touch him, like she knows it would hurt to touch him.

Veronica states that there is one final gift to give for the evening. She establishes her authority next to the tree, reaching between the branches for something she has hidden near the back. She produces a small blue paperboard box and beckons Archie to join her.

Seated in Fred’s Barcalounger, Betty realizes how much Archie resembles his father now, from the way he moves to the most nuanced facial ticks. There was so much of Fred in the boy, the man now. The santa hatted redhead looks both confused and in love with this formidable woman. It is an emotional expression Archie has perfected.

He gets himself out of the chair with a begrudging dad grunt, marching to meet his girlfriend by the tree.

“I thought we agreed on no gifts outside of secret santa,” he scolds gently, taking the box from her.

She loops her arm over his shoulder, patting him on the collarbone. “Well, this one isn’t just a gift for you.”

Archie unfolds the tabs and untucks the bubble wrap. The seams break again, yet Betty sees more than unshakable grief this time. The bandage of joy Veronica placed over it has seeped inside of him and diffused out into the parts of himself that still and will always ache for his father.

Her oldest friend chews the inside of his cheek, nodding as he works himself up to speaking. “In loving memory of Frederick Arthur Andrews,” he announces, choking up.

He gingerly lifts the small glass dove from the nest of bubble wrap. It looks unbelievably fragile in his large hand, a terribly beautiful and fragile thing. He takes so much care locating a safe spot for it amongst the other Andrews ornaments and decorations, ensuring the hook is secure on its branch.

When he turns back to the group, he is wiping tears off his face. Archie slings his arm along the tiny brunette’s shoulders and hauls her close, kissing her hard on the side of her head. She rubs his belly, and he manages to tell her how much he loves her.

He takes in the gathering of his oldest and closest friends and smiles, fighting back more tears, quickly wiping away the ones that escape. “I love you guys so much.”

Reggie launches himself at Archie first, wrapping both Veronica and the redhead up in a hug. Betty and Kevin follow suit in quick succession. Cheryl and Toni fold in. Finally, Jughead envelopes them all, completing the circle.

* * *

When the clock reads a quarter to one, Betty decides to raid the kitchen for some warm milk and turkeys, hoping the supposed melatonin-boost might help. However, she always suspected that widespread belief may be more psychosomatic and less based in scientific fact. Still, if she can trick herself into falling asleep, she will take it.

Hunting for a clean plate, she discovers another sprig of mistletoe taped to the inside of the cabinet and glares at it. Stomping on the trashcan pedal, she is about to toss it before changing her mind and pocketing it. She doesn’t know why or what for. Or she does and won’t admit it yet.

Betty takes her turkey and milk into the living room. The warm, calming glow of the Christmas lights helped lull her to sleep as a child, and she hopes they will work that same magic on her now.

“Hey.”

The redhead is sprawled in Fred’s recliner with his bare feet propped up. His puppy brown eyes shine warmly in the peaceful glow of the Christmas lights. “Can’t sleep, too?”

She gestures her plate at him with a sheepish smile. “I could get you some, too.”

He shakes his head and good-naturedly declines. “I’m stuffed.”

“Do you mind if I join you?”

“Never,” he tells her with a gentle conviction.

Betty takes a seat on the sofa closest to him and puts her own feet up on the coffee table, balancing the milk glass against her thigh.

“Anything in particular keeping you awake?” she ventures, taking a bite of turkey.

He shakes his head. “Not really. Veronica snores when she drinks a little too much.”

Betty chuckles. “Yeah, she does, but a lot of people do that.”

Betty follows his gaze to the tree, his bird-dog eyes trained on the newest addition. “It’s a beautiful ornament,” she offers.

A half-smile plays at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, she’s what dad would’ve called a good egg,” he muses, and then more quietly, “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

Joy instantly blooms in her chest. It is too much for this late hour, but she cannot help it. More tears pinch hot behind her eyes, but she says as proudly as possible, “Archie, that’s fantastic.”

He ducks his face away, a shy smile playing on his lips. “I already have the ring,” he admits, his tone low. “Well, it’s, um, on the way actually, but I want to ask her soon. I’m just trying to find the right – moment.”

Betty could pounce on him. “I’m so happy for you.”

“We’ve already talked about it, staying here,” he tells her, but then the happy glow wanes. “I think that’s what I’m most afraid of, that she’ll change her mind.”

Betty quickly cuts that thought in half. “No, not with you. Not with anyone really. When Veronica decides on something, she sticks with it. She doesn’t make decisions lightly.” The brunette hadn’t been like that with their friendship, to the point Betty feels guilty about how much heavy lifting Veronica has done for their relationship, btu also the brunette had never, ever been like that with Archie. Still, it was normal to have doubts about something this monumental.

“I know,” he agrees, but the glow doesn’t return. “But to me, Veronica is larger than life. It’s hard for me to think Riverdale will be enough for her.”

“You’re enough for her,” Betty maintains.

Archie smiles. “I feel the same way about her. She’s more than enough. She’s – amazing,” he gushes, his gaze softening. “She’s already got all these plans for the town. She’s always talking about it like it’s already a done deal. She’ll be the developer. I’ll be the contractor.”

“Sounds like you’re set on becoming the new Riverdale dynasty,” Betty supposes, and then teasingly warns, “Don’t let Cheryl know your plans.”

He laughs, and Betty hopes some of it got through to him. If Veronica was already making plans for their life here in Riverdale, then Betty knows the brunette made her decision months ago.

Archie is quiet for a bit. They enjoy the warm glow of the Christmas tree. She gives him a sip of her milk and a bite of turkey.

“Arch, where’s your mom?” she finally asks because it’s been bothering her. Mary was one of the parents she did expect to be here.

He filches another piece of turkey off her plate. “She’s wrapping up a case, but she’ll be here tomorrow. We’re picking her up from the airport when we drop off Reggie and Kevin.” Betty thinks this holiday wouldn’t be complete without her. It feels weird without their parents.

“It feels a little strange,” Archie fesses. 

“Without all our parents here?” Betty asks, wondering if he’s thinking along the same vein.

“Yeah, but there’s also something I like about it.”

“Like we’re taking the reins?” she guesses.

“Something like that.”

He sticks his tongue behind his bottom lip in that way that always let her know he is fighting some intense emotion. “I tried to do the Christmas trees at Pop’s this year,” he confesses quietly.

“How did it go?” Betty inquires.

He snorts. “I forgot how hard it was, with the trailer and the chainsaw and the twine. Jughead helped a lot, and it made me remember that my dad used to do it with FP. Then, when I was old enough, I helped.”

“That’s apt.”

“What?”

“Fred and FP used to do it. Now, you and Jughead. It’s like a full circle.”

Archie smiles sadly, nodding and looking up at the tree. “We did it every year. _Every year._ But, it couldn’t be done without at least two people, you know, and there was always someone willing to help us. Pop. Tom Keller. FP when he was in a good place. It made me think about what brings people back to Riverdale. Or, like my dad, makes them never want to leave.

“When we were teenagers, all we could talk about was getting out of here, but, and I don’t want to say it’s because of my dad dying, but something in me has been pulling me back here. Then, I get here, and I feel like I belong. When I was younger, I was so restless, but I get back here, and everything just.” He floats a level hand out from chest. “Stills.”

She thinks she knows what he means. Betty felt the same way about Riverdale, that persistent pull, but unlike Archie, it would never make her stay.

It makes her think about Jug, her swirling thoughts inevitably draining toward him. He is her sole wild card in this town right now, and the fact it has any effect on her is – frustrating. She wishes the feeling would diminish, but they just don’t. It is exactly how Archie describes it. Everything inside her just – stills.

“Sometimes your gut knows where you’re supposed to be before your head does,” she says, tilting her head to look at her oldest friend.

With that compassionate Andrews smile on his ever-handsome face, Archie reaches over and squeezes her hand. It is the closest she has come in years to feeling like she is home.


	2. now would be the right time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to say thanks so much for the wonderful feedback on the first chapter! You're all too nice to me. 💖 
> 
> Again, this chapter is dedicated to @cherylstears. If you have an AO3, would you be okay with me gifting it to you directly? 
> 
> Also a small warning that there be smut ahead, so I've updated the rating accordingly because I don't have a good gauge for what is explicit versus mature.

She gets a solid three hours of sleep before her body wakes her promptly at five in the morning. Peeking out the window, there is too much snow on the ground to go for a run, so she settles for some quick PT in place and a shower.

To her surprise, Jughead is at the dining table with the whole milk carton in one hand and his fork in the other hovering mid-bite in the front of his mouth. Nearly a quarter of the gingerbread house is already in his stomach.

“How is this still happening?” Betty marvels, noticing all the nonpareils have been chipped off the roof.

He finishes the bite and washes it down with some milk straight from the carton. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says, spearing a gumdrop and sticking it in his mouth.

“Your metabolism,” Betty clarifies, indicating his lanky physique. “Your stomach must be like the Bermuda Triangle.”

“To be fair, I didn’t mean to eat Amelia Earhart,” he contends. “Sleep eating is a real and serious medical condition.”

“Okay,” she says, rolling her eyes, but she wants to laugh. “Did you leave any milk for the rest of us?”

He tips the carton toward him and peers inside. “About to kill it.”

Betty peels a pretzel window off the siding and pops it in her mouth. “Considerate of you.”

Without breaking eye contact, he finishes the last of the milk and shakes it, getting the last drop before crushing the carton. “I didn’t think anyone would be up ‘til later. Though I’d have time to go for more.”

It sounds plausible. Most of the partygoers save for Toni and Jughead were fairly sloshed by the end of the night. Toni had to drive Cheryl home, and Jughead still does not drink. Reggie had to be carried upstairs.

Betty would kill for an open-faced turkey sandwich from Pop’s right now because she thinks the only thing in the fridge are charcuterie leftovers and unfinished whites from last night.

“I didn’t expect you to be up this early,” she says, taking the empty carton from him. There might be some orange juice in the fridge to tide her over, but she has no idea how long it will be before the rest of the house wakes up. She is starving right now.

“Old habits die hard,” he returns with a shrug.

Betty snorts. “You weren’t exactly an early bird in high school, Jug.”

“Yeah, but two years of construction,” he explains, poking a half-eaten marshmallow snowman with the end of his fork. That would explain the extra bulk.

She turns the paper carton in her hands, considering it wouldn’t hurt to extend the offer. “How about we kill two birds with one stone and go for Pop’s? We can get milk afterwards.” Her craving for an open-faced turkey sandwich would not settle for anything less.

“What about the others?” he wonders, looking a little surprised she would bail on the rest of the group.

“We can pick up something for them. By the time we get back, they’ll be up,” she reasons easily.

He points his fork at the half-eaten gingerbread house. “I mean, I’m kind of in the zone here, Betts.”

That nickname again, it is like static electricity inside her chest.

“You’re really turning down Pop’s?”

He fixes his sober gaze on her, scooping frosting onto his fork, but Betty doesn’t buy it. “Even if I said I’m buying?”

Jughead stabs his fork so violently into the chest of the last intact marshmallow man that it lodges in the underlying cardboard. She notices it is the one with the little hat. “Only if you’re paying.”

Betty tells him to meet her on the porch in five, but before she can leave the dining room, he suggests, “Hey, you should bring your skates.”

She immediately rounds on him, throwing the carton at his face. “You did go through my bag!”

It bounds off his forehead, but he barely flinches. “To be fair, you didn’t zip it up all the way,” he defends, picking the carton up off the floor. “The present fell out, and I happened to see the skates.”

Betty chews her cheek, trying to recall if that was true or not.

“Does this mean I’m uninvited from Pop’s?” he asks, scratching the side of his nose and staring at the floor.

She snatches the empty carton out of his hands. “No, it means you’re paying.”

He rubs his palm across his cheek, a resisting smile wrinkling his chin. “Okay, fair enough,” he cedes, but then adds, “You should bring the skates.”

“Will you skate with me?” It is the perfect revenge for his snooping.

He glances up at her through his eyelashes, looking both chastised and unhappy with the offer because he knows it is a trap. It is a look he has perfected, the one that reminds her how damned pretty he is, and she can only imagine the nicknames his fellow construction workers had for him.

“I’ll come,” he agrees without much enthusiasm. “Give me ten to see if I can find Archie’s old skates.”

* * *

“Aren’t you going to put those on?”

He places Archie’s skates on the bench next to him. “I never said I’d skate. I just said I’d come.”

“You brought them, though,” Betty argues.

He glances at the skates and then back at her. “And?”

She sighs. “You tricked me.”

He chuckles, thumbing his nose. “I used very precise language, Betts. You assumed.”

_And made the ass of me_ , she thinks, sitting there with her unlaced skates and staring him down.

Unfazed by her judgy eyes, he unscrews the cap on the thermos, pouring himself the first cup. When she doesn’t move, he blows on the hot coffee and throws her an expectant look. “Well, someone has to skate,” he says, waving at the ice.

“You’re just gonna sit here?”

He takes a cautious sip and sets the cup on his knee. “And watch. Any enjoy,” he clarifies, then adds, “Unless you fall. Then, I’ll ask if you’re okay. Then, laugh.”

Betty rolls her eyes. “What a gentleman.” She ignores his laugh, bending over to tighten her skates, double-knotting the bows.

“I know myself,” he throws back easily, slinging his arm along the seatback.

Betty tosses a _suit yourself_ before penguin-walking the short five feet to the pond, and then she takes off across the ice.

She completes her first lap at a leisurely pace, remembering where the willows encroach on the ice and tracing their curves along the edge of the pond. She wonders if her old math teacher Mr. Bernoulli still sets up his skate rental stand on the weekends.

The sun is barely risen above the tree line, so she is the only one on the ice this early morning.

She planned to come here on her own until she ran into Jughead at the dining table. She wonders if he knew that, if he was reminded by seeing the skates in her bag. Because he and Archie knew, and it wows her he would remember some of her own family’s traditions from so many years ago. 

Every Christmas morning, her father would wake Betty and Polly before her mother’s hangover cinnamon rolls were out of the can. If the snow wasn’t too deep, they walked to the pond in Fox Forest Park, Polly on his left, Betty on his right. He would guide them by their mittened hands down the sidewalk, and if either Polly or Betty lost their footing, he was always there, bearing their weight, quickly righting them.

Betty marvels at that now. Her father never lost his balance, not once. He always got them to the pond without a single bump or scrape. Of course, when they came off the ice, that was a different story.

By the time they were in middle school, Polly was in deep with competitive figure skating. On those annual Christmas mornings, she skated circles around Betty and her father. Gliding along the ice on one leg, she swept back and forth as delicate and elegant as a swan. Betty didn’t envy her, though. She and her father were fine enough on their own.

Polly would perform some trick for their father, and though he never failed to give her the attention and praise she desired, he also never let go of Betty’s hand. To this day, Betty still does not know how to skate backwards, but for her, it was never about the tricks.

That is what Betty misses most about those mornings. While Polly lapped them and practiced her salchow, Betty and her father hand-in-hand looped around the pond at an unhurried pace. There was never anything but pleasant holiday small talk between them. He would ask about her hopes for next semester, whether she needed anything for school, a calm offer to come with him to the next car show. It was the reason Betty loved Christmas more than any other holiday, because for twenty-four hours, the Coopers shelved their grievances and their grudges and focused on one another.

When they returned home, pink-cheeked and wind-chafed chins, the cinnamon rolls were fresh from the oven and resting on the counter. Their father made a fresh pot of coffee before he brushed the snow out of his hair. He would refill their mother’s mug, and he always added a little pick-me-up from the bottle beneath the sink.

It was one of the few times Alice didn’t care about how much her daughters ate. She even argued it was better the rolls go quickly before the great New Year’s junk food purge. It was also the only time Alice allowed them to eat in the living room in front of the television. While classic Christmas cartoons played on repeat in the background, Betty and Polly gorged on cinnamon rolls and opened presents. Polly played Santa. Their father freshened the coffees. Alice served more cinnamon rolls.

There was a peaceable predictability to those mornings that Betty misses, where her family relaxed, took a breath. Though they may never have gotten everything they wanted, in those moments, Betty found she never wanted for more than that, the lazy sweet calm.

Betty finishes her last loop and skates back to the park path. Jughead is right where she left him.

Breathing hard, she collapses onto the bench, casting her feet wide. He offers her a fresh cup of coffee black, and jostling his shoulder, she tells him, “You’re missing out.”

He scoffs. “On a broken tailbone? Biggest regret of my life, for sure.”

“Time will tell,” Betty considers, arching an ominous eyebrow at him.

He doesn’t have a response for once, smirking and staring out across the pond. Betty sips her coffee, following his gaze with her own. The sun is all the way up now, which means the rest of the gang is probably waking up.

Jughead suddenly clears his throat. “So, are you going to tell me what you’ve been up to all these years? Or do I have to coerce it out of you?”

Betty narrows her eyes at him. “I’d love to see you try.”

“Oh?” He sounds interested, looking ready for the challenge.

“I start police academy next week.”

He sobers right up. “Guess I’d be the one getting coerced then.”

She laughs. “Intimidated?’

He considers it, tilting his head to the side. His smile is a little self-deprecating when he admits that it is. “A little.” Like it is a good thing. It makes her feel good to surprise him, in the good way, to know that not all the new things about her are as alienating as she imagines.

“Was that always the plan then?” he wonders.

  
She nods, skimming her fingers along the warm edges of the thermos cup. “Bachelors in Criminal Justice. Follow up with the Masters. I want to fast track my way up the chain as soon as possible.”

When he doesn’t say anything, she looks over and sees him staring at her. “What?”

He shakes his head, smiling. “Nothing, nothing. I’m just – don’t take this the wrong way, please. I mean it with the utmost respect. I don’t think I expected anything less from you.”

She thinks if it came from anyone else, her mother especially, it would raise her hackles, but by all his preemptive caveats, he knew that, too. Expectations set people up for failure. Betty knows that. Her mother did not expect Betty to go into this line of work, and though Betty excels at it, it feels like a failure in her mother’s eyes. Jughead’s expectations don’t come with the same strings attached.

“Thanks,” she says sincerely, but then unkindly reminds both him and her, “But, it made me miss something unmissable.” 

A pall darkens his demeanor, and it makes Betty want to eat her words, especially when he grasps for something to say, anything to say, opening and closing his mouth. So, she fills in the blanks, trying to make it easier. “Did they bury him?” It is her own desire to know. She needs a place where she can visit him, Fred.

Jughead winces, and though it only lasts a second, her heart leaps up into her throat with panic. She has been too afraid to ask Archie, but now she feels like an asshole for placing the onus on Jughead. He finally speaks, but it doesn’t come easily. “They cremated him.”

When he doesn’t elaborate, she presses further, poking at the bruises on the apple. “What did they do with the ashes?”

Jughead presses the backs of his knuckles to his mouth. She thinks maybe it is still too difficult for him to talk about, that he cannot hide behind it with levity as usual. It was his modus operandi in high school when things weren’t great at home and in general. “Scattered them on the Sweetwater,” he tells her. “They dedicated a bench to him there.”

Without that river, there wouldn’t be a town. It was the lifeblood of Riverdale, and it is apt for the man who was the heart of this place. “That’s perfect,” Betty says softly, smiling at the pond, recalling summers spent on the edge of the Sweetwater with the Andrews and the Jones barbequing and swimming.

When she looks back at Jughead, he is watching her, something fond but fragile in his gaze.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” she admits, reaching out to touch his knee.

He fidgets, looking more uncomfortable than she has seen him since she got here. “Guess the downside to funerals is that no one films them,” he jokes. Badly. He knows it, too, looking away. “Not like weddings. Or births,” he adds weakly, his voice dying.

She knows he is trying to make her feel better, but it only serves to make her feel downright awful for broaching the subject.

He buries his face in his hands. “Goddamnit, sorry. I did that shit at the funeral, too. Sorry, I don’t – I’m not good at dealing with grief.” He sits up, clasping his hands in his lap and staring out across the frozen pond.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she offers quietly. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“It’s okay. At least you had an excuse. Archie said you had some big test,” he says, smiling tightly at her. “My dad on the other hand.” She sees the tension in his jaw, can practically hear his teeth grinding.

It was another noticeable absence from last night.

“I didn’t want to go either. Like I said, I don’t deal well with grief, but I knew it wasn’t just about me. That’s something my dad never learned, unfortunately,” he tells her, his gaze in his lap.

She knows that look well. She witnessed it often enough when she saw Archie unrolling the air mattress for the third night in a row or spotting Jughead coming out of the boys’ locker room at six in the morning with wet hair and a duffle, though he didn’t play any sports. It is the look he gets when he knows he is alone and no one – not Archie or Fred or Betty – can sway him to believe otherwise.

“I’m sure he’s mad at himself,” Betty figures because she knew FP loved Fred to pieces. Everyone knew that.

He might have been terrible at showing it, but there were few people Jughead’s dad cared about more than Fred Andrews. Knowing what she does about Jughead, about what it was like growing up, she can’t say she is surprised FP failed to show up for the funeral. From what she remembers about the man, there was always an expression of pain on his face, of struggling, and he walked like that, like he was always on precarious ground. It is why she is so amazed to see Jughead now, the assurance in his gait and manner that wasn’t there before. She is sad to know FP has kept some of his worst habits, but she also cannot imagine what it would have been like to lose his closest and oldest friend. Betty doesn’t ever want to imagine a world where Archie Andrews or Jughead Jones don’t exist.

“I mean, I’m mad at myself, too,” she confesses.

He regards her sidelong, leaning away like he doesn’t quite understand why she would feel that way. “Even if Fred wouldn’t have been mad at you?”

She nods. “Mad enough for the both of us.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “Which is still only half as mad as you think it is because Fred wouldn’t be.”

“You don’t think that forgiveness extends to your dad,” she points out, closing the circle neatly around him.

He scoffs. It is good-natured, but he knows she tricked him. He resists it, folding his arms across his middle.

In a minute or two, he sucks his teeth and begrudgingly concedes, “Maybe you have a point.”

Then, he sticks his tongue in his cheek, seeming tickled by her cleverness but also chafed by it. “You’ve always been good at that.”

“What?”

“Making me reconsider the way I see other people,” he clarifies. “You’re big picture, and it’s something I’ve always liked about you.” 

She faux gapes at him. “Was that a bonified Jughead Jones compliment?”

He narrows his eyes at her, that playful smirk teasing at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t act like I never give you compliments, Betts. You know you’re one of my favorite people.”

That strikes her. It is something he never would have admitted seven years ago. Back then, he always played his cards close to his chest like his life depended on it. He trusted his actions would convey the true depth of his feelings towards the people he cared about, and though she knew without a doubt that she mattered to him, it fills her with some relief to hear the verbal confirmation of it now. Because some things need to be said, just once.

“Even now? Seven years later?” she challenges, poking his shoulder.

He doesn’t flinch away, letting her prod at him, and there is tenderness but also resolve in his gaze. “You’ll always be one of my favorite people.”

“Well, color me complimented,” she offers back, jostling his shoulder, pretending her heart isn’t about to beat out of her chest.

He smiles and ducks away, letting her process the sentiment without his eyes on her. Mercifully, he changes the subject. “Where are you gonna be, for academy?”

“New York.”

“Where in New York?”

“The city, Jug,” she clarifies.

His eyes practically bulge from his skull. “Holy shit, you’re gonna be a New York City Police Officer.”

She shrugs, her cheeks warming. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

He shakes his head adamantly, not hearing it. “Hell no, that’s amazing, Betts.”

She smiles into her cup of coffee. He unscrews the cap on the Thermos, cradling her hand and angling her cup towards him. “Officer,” he says, bowing his head as he pours her a fresh cup.

Betty forgot how charming he was when he wanted to be. She doesn’t know what else to say, so she bows back. “Citizen.”

He snorts and withdraws his hand. “I might see you around then.”

Her thoughts start whirring, that tiny wanton ache pulsing in her chest, the one she keeps trying to ignore when he is around. “You’re in New York?” She does her best to keep the hope out of her voice.

He nods, tightening the cap on the Thermos and setting it down on his other side. “Yeah, MFA program at Hunter.”

“Jughead, whoa,” she marvels. She gets that same urge she got last night when Archie admitted he planned to ask Veronica to marry him, like she wants to strangle him in a hug.

Jughead smirks, slinging his arm along the top of the bench again. “Now it’s your turn to be impressed, huh.”

She cannot help grinning, grabbing his hand. “No, Jughead, _that’s_ amazing.” Amazing because it is a phenomenal accomplishment in and of itself, but also because he will be around. She won’t be alone in the city. It feels like a sign, and she hates how much hope it gives her.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” he brushes off, but she can see he is tickled by her admiration, sending his shy smile off to the side. “I, uh, learned, pretty quickly how useless my English degree was after undergraduate,” he explains, his gaze darting to her hand folded over his own.

She slowly replaces it in her lap. “But, you’re going for an MFA anyway.”

“It’s free,” he reasons.

“Never go to grad school unless it’s free,” she quotes, blowing on her hot coffee.

“Who said that?” he wonders, staring at her hands.

“My undergraduate mentor.”

He nods in agreement.

Then, Betty does the math. “Wait, I thought you said you did two years construction.”

“Yeah, but that was straight out of high school. Fred set me up with a union job,” he explains, his hand tapping the seatback next to her shoulder. The crook of his elbow is a nice pressure against her shoulders.

“Was college eventually the plan?”

He scratches his chin. “Uh, no. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go at all, but you make pretty good money at construction, especially union. And you have no time to spend it because you’re on the road all the time, so the money just kind of sits there.

“After a couple years, I realized I had enough to get through most of my degree without too much debt. I worked a city road crew during my undergraduate, too. Figured a degree wouldn’t be a total waste of my time.”

“And now you’re at Hunter,” she says in awe. “That’s – that’s fantastic, Jug. I’m really happy for you.”

“It worked out the end,” he concedes dismissively, like it is no big thing. “I should give Fred a lot of that credit.”

“Give yourself some due, Jug,” Betty urges. “They were your choices, too.”

He smiles awkwardly, looking far too boyish for his 25 years, and offers to refill her cup again. As he freshens her coffee, he imparts, “Not everything is roses, though. Up until break, Archie and I were in on an apartment, but it looks like he might be moving back here, and I can’t afford the lease on my own. I suspect he has already or is going to ask Veronica the big question soon, so I’m gonna have to eventually surrender to the roommate search regardless.”

“Daunting,” Betty quips.

He regards her down the line of his nose, unamused with her lack of pity. “Understatement.”

“Why? Are you difficult to live with?” she teases.

“I am an acquired taste,” he explains slowly, sounding like he is trying to convince himself.

“Archie and I have a good system, okay? We both get terrible insomnia where he beats on his punching bag, and I beat on my typewriter. The two sounds cancel each other out, and for the most part, we get winded at the same time. It’s a well-oiled machine, and I don’t want to upset the balance with someone with – god forbid – a _schedule_.”

It feels like he is describing her, and she doesn’t like it very much. “Most people have a schedule, Jug.”

“That’s not the kind of schedule I mean. I mean, _a schedule_. Everything has to happen at the exact right time down to the vacuuming. All the minutes are accounted for. I can’t work like that,” he explains, gesturing with his hand next to her shoulder again. She realizes how hyperaware she is of his body, his hands, his proximity.

“You worked construction. You’re in grad school,” Betty points out, not quite following.

“That’s in my professional life. I can tolerate it,” he contends. “In my personal space, though, it’s a deal breaker. Besides, when I finally make it as a writer, everything is on my time.”

Betty loves it that he says _when_ and not _if_. It definitely deviates from the eternal pessimist that was teenaged Jughead Jones. However, while she wants to defend her regimented lifestyle, instead she tells Jug that if he needs help finding a new roommate, she might know a few people. There were bound to be a few in her training class looking for a room-share in the city.

He offers nothing but a noncommittal maybe, like perhaps he doesn’t trust Betty’s taste in roommates, like he worries she would pick someone _scheduled._ “I’ll keep you in mind.”

The coffee cashed, Betty hands him the cup. While she bends down to unlace her skates, he suddenly curses.

“What?”

“My hands are freezing,” he says, holding them out in front. His fingers are completely red.

“Where are your gloves?”

He grins sheepishly. “I forgot them.”

Betty balks. “But not the skates you didn’t use?”

He cringes. Betty sighs and grabs his hand, shoving it into her coat pocket.

“I have my own pockets, Betts,” he says, blinking at her. 

“But, not my warmth,” she returns easily.

Angling herself toward him, she steals his other hand and sticks it in her pocket, covering it with her mittened one. She makes it clear that this is just until his hands warm up, and he arches an eyebrow at her. “Sure.”

“Then, food,” she promises. Both their stomachs grumble on cue.

* * *

The bell dings above her heads, and it floods Betty with memories. Pop Tate tosses an instant and warm greeting from behind the service counter, and Betty tries to recall the last time she felt this content to be somewhere. Her mouth already waters with the promise of that long-awaited open-faced turkey sandwich. 

“Hey, you two, your friends are right over there,” Pop informs them, nodding at the other end of the diner.

Jughead pats Betty’s shoulder. She follows his gaze and, sure enough, the rest of the Andrews’ party made it out of bed and dumped themselves into a booth at Pop’s.

Kevin notices them first, shouting across the diner. “There they are!” Every head swivels in their direction at the same time, and feeling a little guilty, Betty figures she could have sent a text. She blames Jughead for distracting her.

Kevin commandeers a chair from another table, freeing up two spots in the booth. When Jughead helps Betty out of her coat and hangs it on the booth-end hook, Kevin raises an eyebrow at her. As she squeezes into the seat next to Jug, Kevin throws her another suggestive look, which she steadfastly ignores, hiding her face behind one of the menus she memorized by age ten.

She feels Jughead’s shoulder press into hers. Glancing sidelong, she sees him perusing her menu. It is brief, and then he leans away, the warmth receding. He slouches in his seat, clasping his hands over his stomach as he waits to Pop’s to come take their orders.

Kevin asks Veronica what she is having. His head ducked low, Reggie groans and politely asks if Kevin can keep his fucking voice down.

“This is why you don’t mix liquor, dear Reggie,” Kevin reminds him, stealing the poor guy’s menu.

Pop ambles up to their table, tapping his pen jauntily on the receipt pad. “Isn’t this a blast from the past,” he exclaims, taking it all in with a big smile. “I can’t remember the last time I saw all of you in one spot. Look at you. You’re all grown up.”

“You, too, Pop,” Jug quips, sitting up and slinging his arm along the top of the booth. His hand dangles next to Betty’s shoulder, and she starts to wonder if he is doing it on purpose, crowding her space.

Pop laughs. “You noticed?” He points at the greying hair sticking out from beneath his hat, but it looks no different than it did when they were all in high school. Betty cannot remember Pop without grey hair. “I think it makes me more distinguished, don’t you?”

“Voices, please, for the love of god,” Reggie moans, dropping his forehead to the formica.

Pop scribbles something quickly on his pad. “Something with lots of gravy for Mantle.”

Without lifting his head, Reggie gives him the a-okay sign.

“For you, Betty?” Pop inquires, tipping the receipt pad toward her.

“Open-faced turkey sandwich, please.” Just putting in the order feels like a major relief. She also asks for extra gravy because it is a hungover Reggie Mantle kind of day.

Pop takes the rest of their orders and saunters off to the service counter. Glancing over her shoulder, Betty stares at the long line of familiar booths, Pop behind the counter pouring their coffees, taking in the familiar smell of home-fries and bacon. She doesn’t know why, but that pull Archie talked about last night feels stronger now. Jughead chuckles at something Veronica says, and she feels it rumble through the booth, from the arm along her shoulders, the side of his body pressed to hers.

Veronica remembers she forgot to order something and trots up to the service counter. She comes back a few moments later, snuggling into Archie’s side. 

Kevin attempts to keep his voice low for Reggie’s sake, but it doesn’t stop him from starting his inquisition. “So. What were you two up to this morning?” He wags his finger at their ice skates. “Some early morning exercise, I see,” he says in a way that Betty knows he is not referring to skating.

She cannot tell if Jughead catches on. “Oh, these? These are just for show,” he explains, moving his skates down to the ground.

Archie looks under the table. “Are those mine?”

Jughead drums the tabletop. “Like I said, for show.”

Betty takes a sip of her ice water, remembering how dry she gets after being out on the ice. “I skated,” she declares, her tone prickly. “Someone lured me out there under false pretenses.”

“If anything, I saved you a trip to the emergency room,” Jughead argues. “Trust me, you’d be reading old _Highlights_ in the ER right now while they stitched my upper lip back together. The open-faced turkey sandwiches from the hospital cafeteria are nothing to write home about, Betts.” With the hand next to her shoulder, he playfully bops her on the side of the head, and she swats at him in retaliation. 

“Do we have to separate you two?” Kevin asks, looking more than amused.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t start with her, bro,” Reggie adds. “She’s got moves.”

Kevin snorts because then it would be self-fulfilling prophecy. “You’d end up in the emergency room anyway.”

Jughead chuckles, his hand dropping back to its dangling position next to her shoulder. “It’d be a bummer to drink my Christmas dinner through a straw,” he muses, and then leans over and whispers low in her ear, “So, I’ll play nice for now.”

Thankfully, Pop arrives with their drinks, diverting everyone’s attention to the other end of the table. Betty swallows roughly, wondering where the hell that came from. She smooths her palm across her lower belly where something warm stirs but affects her Sunday best smile for Pop.

When Pop places a strawberry milkshake in front of her, she looks up at him in confusion because she didn’t order it. The diner owner scans the rest of the table, looking for outside confirmation. “Apparently there was some kind of sweater contest,” he explains.

Betty sucks her teeth at Veronica. “Really?” They voted last night, but Betty hoped everyone had gotten too drunk to remember.

“Betty’s drunk kittens definitely stole the show,” Kevin gets out between chuckles. “Jughead’s deranged Rudolph was a close second.”

Pop asks Betty if she wants something else, moving to take the milkshake back. Jughead stops him, though. “She’s just being modest, Pop. Come on, Betts, to the victor goes the spoils.” He punctuates this by plucking the strawberry off the top and offering it to her. When she doesn’t eat it, glaring at him, he pops it in his mouth and grins at her, his cheeks bulging with it.

“We’ll share it,” he suggests. “I think it’s only fair the runner-up gets some kind of prize.”

Betty stares at the dollop of whipped cream on top, the small pinkened divot where the strawberry once was. He did that when they were teenagers, too, stole her strawberry. Sweeping her finger across the swirl of whipped cream, she sticks it in her mouth, and then thanks Pop.

Jughead leans over to take a sip off the straw, but Betty slides the glass away from him. “Oh, no, better luck next year, Jones,” she scolds, taking the first pull off the milkshake.

By the end of brunch, he is finishing it for her, like always.

At the end of their meal, Veronica says she and Archie are driving Kevin and Reggie to the airport. Jughead and Archie pay the bill, and everyone filters out into the parking lot to say their goodbyes. They cannot all fit in the car, so Jughead and Betty agree to stay behind.

“We have to get milk anyway,” Jug figures.

In the middle of their hug, Kevin takes the opportunity to whisper in Betty’s ear that she should stop hesitating. “It doesn’t have to be forever,” he argues, but that’s what she thought the first time, and look where it got her.

She gives his cheek an affectionate pat. “I’m gonna miss you.” He smiles softly and hugs her again, making her promise to keep in touch, to at least let him know when she graduates from academy and where she will be stationed.

When Reggie opens his arms to Betty for a hug, she hesitates. He grins, supposing, “Did I wear out my welcome then?”

To be fair, Reggie was always more Archie’s and Veronica’s friend, but Betty can’t say she doesn’t hold some measure of affection for him, his earlier sleaziness notwithstanding.

She rolls her eyes and collapses into him, drawing her arms around his broad shoulders. He hugs her tight, her toes barely touching the ground. “I didn’t get to say how good it was to see you,” he says quietly. “I promise no mistletoe next year.”

She turns her face and pecks him on the cheek. He lets her down, eyebrows raised in surprise. She smacks his chest. “See, that’s all it takes, Reg.”

* * *

“When do you have go back?” Jughead asks over their feet crunching through the snow. He holds the carton of milk like it is a football.

“Monday.” She blows warm air into her mittens. “How about you?”

“After New Year’s. I might go back earlier to figure out the roommate situation, depending on how my conversation with Archie goes. It’s looking more and more like he’s staying here, huh.”

Remembering last night’s conversation, Betty thinks so, too. “Seriously, though, if you end up needing a roommate, let me know.”

He regards her with suspicion. “What are you suggesting, Ms. Cooper?”

She catches on and scoffs. “Um, no, I meant I might know some recruits looking for room shares.”

He sighs in faux disappointment. “Well, good.”

“Good?”

“Can you imagine what Alice would do to me if we started living in sin together?” he jokes and she punches him on the shoulder.

“Save it for the mats, Betts,” he chides, rubbing his arm. “But yeah, send me some names. I trust your judgment.”

“No one regimented,” she figures.

“Please, god, no. Get me another insomniac. Someone who plays video games but knows the difference between Zelda and Link. Oh, and they’re not allowed to buy those weird protein supplements. That is bastardized chocolate. Makes the worst chocolate milk.”

This is the Jughead Betty remembers the best, the most endearing, judgmental, and intolerant snob she has ever met. “Doesn’t Archie drink those?”

“Yeah, but he’s my best friend, so he gets a pass,” he argues simply. “And I still heckle him mercilessly when he calls Link Zelda.”

She is beginning to think he won’t mind so much anymore if – when Archie moves out. “Why don’t you make me a list, Jug?”

“That’s a good idea. Or a questionnaire,” he adds, a fanatic gleam to his eye that reminds her of those time he got too involved in a G&G game with Dilton Doiley and his merry band of role players.

“Okay, put it together, and I’ll see what I can do,” she tells him, knowing full well there are probably no guys like that in her training class.

She’ll make it work. Or at least find the only one who can let Jughead’s sardonicism slide off his back. So far Archie, Fred, and Betty herself are the only people who can stand it. Even find it semi-charming to some extent. She realizes there is very little she doesn’t find charming about Jughead, and that still frustrates her.

* * *

Veronica sends Betty a text about their plans to eat Christmas dinner at Delmonico’s downtown, but it would be a while. The gang is stuck in traffic at the airport. They haven’t even picked Mary up yet. Apparently, everyone and their brother flies out Christmas Day.

Betty sends her a heart and a thumbs up. Then, she types out a quick request to let her know when they’re on their way back, so Betty can get ready and meet Veronica, Archie, and Mary at the restaurant. Veronica replies with a crying emoji and then a confirmation text.

Tossing her phone on the pillow, she figures she should let Jughead know. He is staying in Archie’s old bedroom, a bare ten feet from the guest bedroom. She hasn’t heard anything in the hallways for a while. When they got home, he retreated to his room with the excuse of cleaning up Reggie’s drunk mess.

If she had his phone number, she would text him. There are only a couple days left before she heads back to the city. Though they made vague plans to communicate at least a little when he returns to Hunter, she gets that sinking feeling this may be the last time she sees him in a while. If she goes to his room, she knows she will do something stupid. It won’t be as simple as telling him to expect Delmonico’s for Christmas dinner.

Reaching over, she pulls open the top drawer on the nightstand, revealing the final sprig of mistletoe she found on the cabinet last night. Chewing her bottom lip, she wavers between berating herself for being ridiculous and rationalizing it isn’t a crime to ask.

Casual sex is a regular occurrence in her life. Sometimes it helps take the edge off when her ambition gets the best of her. She understood it as something to be enjoyed on her own terms, and Jughead helped a lot even if he didn’t know it. He had been careful and respectful and present. She cannot imagine how many sexual hang-ups she would have developed if it had been a bad experience with anyone else. It is not as if she hasn’t had terrible mishaps since then with a handful of assholes, but having that calming memory to fall back on, it centers her.

He could always say no. She would be humiliated, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Jughead didn’t treat her any differently after the first time. She doesn’t think he would do it this time. If anything, they are more mature now, worldlier even. Another bout of casual sex in their timeline wouldn’t really shift the needle. Would it?

There might also be a small nagging part that needs to figure something out for herself. If what she felt the first time and its ripple effect throughout the last seven years, if all of that was simply a fluke. Maybe then, she could let it go. _Or it will ruin you further_.

She slams the drawer closed and buries her face in her pillow.

It is still so easy between them. She expected awkwardness and stilted conversation, but he talks to her like the last seven years never happened. There is no dead air between them, most times no physical space, and it drives her mad.

There are small but monumental differences. His self-conscious smile remains but there is a sureness in how he carries himself that was not there before. It frustrates her how that only makes him more attractive. And still beautiful, though Cheryl and Veronica maintained she was the only one that thought so back in high school. When she mentioned it in passing. About a week before she asked him to sleep with her. 

_Screw it_ , she decides, yanking the drawer open and grabbing the mistletoe.

She knocks on Archie’s bedroom door and gets a flash of déjà vu. How many times had she shown up to watch them play videogames in Archie’s room, sprawled on Archie’s bed while Jughead sat on the floor with his back against the footboard, Archie in his desk chair, Betty munching on forbidden Cheetos to the frenzied tapping of their controllers. After four straight hours of gaming, Fred would inevitably knock on the door and ask if anyone needed something more substantial than simple starches and salt.

Without breaking eye contact with the television screen, there was Archie’s hasty _, I could eat_ , followed by Jughead’s cheeky, _I could always eat_.

She hears something thump and a pained grunt before the bedroom door swings open wide.

“Hey,” he greets, righting his beanie.

“Were you sleeping?” she wonders, feeling slightly bad now.

He shakes his head, and she spots the open book on the bedspread. “Getting a head start,” he explains. “What’s up?”

It is the perfect segue, and she resists a smile when she looks up at the ceiling, guiding his line of sight.

His confused grin is so damned charming that she almost tackles him right then, but she waits, patiently, decisively, until he follows her gaze.

“Goddamnit, I thought I’d gotten all of them,” he practically shouts, reaching to snatch it off the moulding, but Betty quickly curls her hand over his bicep and lowers his arm.

For a moment, she imagines him scouring the entire house for all the mistletoe Reggie hid throughout, sniffing out every last one. Then, she wonders, perhaps arrogantly, if he did it for her, if he knew their friend’s plans, if Jug didn’t want her kissing Reggie. She wonders if there were other signs she missed.

His confusion returns, but only for a moment before it clicks. Her heart beats double time, but she ventures with some uncertainty, “You gonna kiss me or not?”

There is not even a millisecond of hesitation before she is up against the doorsill. In his fervor, the back of her skull knocks the moulding as he snatches her mouth up with his own. The first is quick, urgent, but it loosens the bolt of tension in her chest. He pulls back briefly, and she startles at the loaded look on his face, the hasty debate filtering through his eyes, and then the next one shuts down the last of her doubts, perhaps his own, too, when he curls his hands around her waist and pushes himself up against her, pinning her to the doorsill. He coaxes her lips apart to run his tongue gently over her own, and it pretty much mentally lays her out.

“Are we?” he murmurs, drawing her forward by her waist and making her arch into him.

Her hands are resting on his biceps. She recognizes the red indents from her nails engraved in his skin. “Not here,” she says. Not in the hallway, but also not in Archie’s room, not on that awkward twin bed in the place where she used to build pillow forts with him and Archie.

Betty grabs his hand and pulls him toward the guest room, but he stops and ducks into the master where Archie and Veronica are staying. She doesn’t follow because, well, it doesn’t seem like the most appropriate place either, but then he comes out with a box of condoms.

She snorts. “The whole box? Pretty presumptuous,” she teases.

He thinks she means it, wavering uncomfortable in the doorway. Manipulating the box in his hands, he looks like he seriously considers putting it back where he found it.

His kicked puppy look is borderline precious, but Betty doesn’t leave him in the kennel long. “I’m kidding, Jug,” she says, reaching her hand out to him.

He scowls, and then he is on her, looping one arm around her waist and manhandling her into the guest bedroom. He practically throws her onto the mattress as punishment. It gives her a rush, her eyes lighting up in surprise.

He tosses the condoms onto the nightstand and then reaches for the back of his shirt, tugging it over his head. Betty follows his lead, getting up on her knees and pulling her sweater off.

When she starts on the first button of her jeans, he stops her. “Hey, hey, let me,” he bids, kneeling on the bed and pushing her onto her back.

He sweeps his beanie off his head and drops it over the side of the bed. God, she really wants to run her fingers through that messy mop.

Jughead draws the zipper down, staring at her bare torso in a way that makes her feel like she might hyperventilate. Before he can go further, she finally poses the question. For her peace of mind, she tells herself, even though he is about to take off her pants, which should be the only green light she needs. “Are you okay with this?”

He pauses and meets her gaze. “Yeah, more than okay,” he intimates. “Is – are you okay with this?”

It is what she wants, but it feels fast. He didn’t even question it. She expected a question. To her, Jughead doesn’t seem the type to just say yes to every girl that wants to sleep with him, but then she doesn’t know everything about him. People change in seven years, and even if he was the type, that isn’t her business. Calling him out would be calling herself out, and Betty doesn’t feel like looking this gift horse in the mouth. It’s just – she wants it to be his choice, too, to know that he’s not just going with the flow.

It is impulsive and stupid, but already kissing him is the only thing she wants to be doing for the foreseeable future. Or at least until Veronica texts them that she’s on her way. Like Kevin said, it doesn’t have to be forever. It could just be enjoyed, and damn it if she doesn’t want to enjoy him right fucking now.

Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, Betty nods, raising her hips so he can draw her jeans down her legs. He takes her candy cane socks with them and chuckles at the tiny reindeer leaping across her panties. There are some things she never gave up, some sweet things that linger beneath the grit of GSR on her knuckles and the taut functionality of her ponytail, which she frees now, letting her hair spill across the pillowcase.

His nostrils flare, hands smoothing up her calves to her thighs, hitching his fingers beneath the elastic of her panties to draw them off. Then, he grips her knees briefly to draw them apart, so he can settle between them. She feels the front of his jeans between her legs and clenches her thighs around his hips on contact, hooking one foot over his thigh. Just the smell of him again makes her skin crawl in the best way.

Propped above her, he cards his fingers through her hair. His gaze skims her face, everywhere but her eyes like he wants to make a study of her. Then, his thumb is hard against the bend of her jaw, and she feels unprepared when he kisses her, regret tight in her chest for not taking a bigger breath as he pushes her under.

His other hand glides down her collarbone, palming her breast through the soft cups of her bra. “Can I?” he whispers against her lips. She nods eagerly, arching into him to give him access to the front clasp, sighing when he releases the hooks.

She manipulates herself out of her bra and flings it somewhere to the side. He smiles into the next kiss, into her fingertips pressed beneath his cheekbone. Folding his hand over her bare breast, his palm is so much warmer now, and she breathes into him, loving the roughness of his hand that wasn’t there the first time.

She raises her hips into him, needing more pressure, more friction. He rocks himself against her on instinct, lips moving down her chin, teeth nipping at the soft skin above her carotid. When he presses his tongue there, she wonders if he likes the feel of her pulse against it, can sense the urgency in it. Betty grunts with need, grabbing his ass and pulling him into her.

Then, Jughead pushes himself up, his hands on either side of her face. She still has a hand on his ass and the other inching across the bedspread toward the nightstand. Breathing roughly and quickly through his nose, he stares down at her like he is trying to work up the courage to ask her something. Betty considers grabbing the box of condoms, but then he asks if he can try something.

She stalls momentarily, wondering what he has up his sleeve. “Um, okay.”

Rolling off, he sweeps all the pillows off the bed and stretches out on his back next to her. She sits up, trying to figure out what he has planned. When he beckons her to come to him, she shakes her head, not getting it.

“Come here,” he bids, tugging on her knee and hip.

“You’re letting me be on top,” she figures, her tongue in her cheek as she straddles him. Betty does prefer this position, but she doesn’t think he knows that.

Then, he cups her bare ass and guides her further forward. She startles, suddenly catching his meaning. “Wait, what?”

“Come on,” he says again, coaxing her up his body, but she plants her knees on either side of his waist and sits on his hips.

He stops pressing her. “You don’t like it?”

She does, but it surprises her he would immediately go for it. Most guys don’t offer right out of the gate and certainly not in this position. Betty has only done it a couple times and only with people she had been dating a while. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to or that she isn’t deadly curious. She’s seen him go to town on a double cheeseburger at Pop’s, sucking it down like he doesn’t need to breathe, so she can only imagine. And he has always been a good kisser. She still doesn’t know where he learned to do that thing with his tongue behind her ear.

“Don’t feel like you need to,” she tells him instead, but that curiosity keeps stirring in her lower belly, coming to a simmer.

He smirks, massaging her ass. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to, Betts.”

He releases her ass and pats the spaces on either side of his shoulders. “Come on, saddle up.”

She laughs short, tapping his chest as she thinks on it.

“I promise you’ll like it,” he tries again.

She knows she’ll like it. She just doesn’t want to like it too much.

Resting his hands on her thighs, he tells her, “If it really makes you that uncomfortable, we don’t have to.”

Though he looks disappointed, she knows he won’t push her any farther. If all she wants is a quick romp, he will oblige. Not that it was particularly quick the first time. She never got anywhere, but he was careful and he put the work in to make sure she felt the least bit of discomfort (even though it still hurt).

“I mean,” she responds, trailing off. “If this is a serious offer.” She cannot stand when someone works her up and doesn’t follow through.

He smooths his hands across her thighs, and it makes her feel warm, heady. She forgot how much she liked his hands, those startling long and elegant fingers. “Let me show you how serious I am,” he whispers, holding her hipbones like handles and rocking her forward.

Betty rises on her knees and scoots forward until she feels his breath on the inside of her thigh. She grabs the headboard to steady herself, closing her eyes at the sensation of his hands skimming down the backs of her thighs. He turns his head and kisses the inside of her thigh, his lips surprisingly cold but his tongue warm.

She lowers herself slowly, slightly worried because the first time someone did this to her, they went too fast, and she clocked them in the head with her knee as she launched herself off their face. When she feels Jughead’s fingers dipping between her legs, rubbing on either side of her folds to get her used to the sensation, she realizes he might know what he is doing down there.

His fingertips graze around her clit before he gently presses his index finger over the little nub and rubs gently, prompting a pleased hum from Betty. His other hand on her sacrum compels her to drop her hips just enough he can give her one tentative lick that makes her breath hitch, dropping her chin to her chest and muttering a curse under her breath. He replaces his fingers with his mouth, and she squeaks, squeezing her eyes shut when he flicks his tongue against her clit.

“Holy shit,” she says breathlessly, burying a hand in his hair. It is softer than she remembered.

He eases her into it, gentle licks, careful strokes of his fingers. Eventually, she adjusts to some of the oversensitivity and relaxes into the good stuff. Gripping the headboard, she rocks herself against his mouth, letting herself enjoy his lazy rhythm. She smiles when she feels him wedge his shoulder against her thigh in case she loses herself and clamps her knees on either side of his face. No one wants a Gallagher situation.

The best part is he doesn’t talk. So many talked throughout that Betty could never keep her momentum. One hand wringing the headboard and the other carding fingers through his hair, Betty knows she doesn’t need to worry about momentum at all.

Her breaths come short and fast, getting stuck inside her chest as her entire body condenses and contracts around that epicenter of pleasure between her legs. Her rocking gets a little more aggressive, but he just grunts appreciatively, roughly grabbing her ass and helping her. He really meant business when he offered, she marvels privately, sighing when she feels one hand slithering up her torso and palming her breast. She covers his hand, whining when he tongues her clit in just the right way. God, she felt that one.

Sensing she is close, he doubles down, increasing the pace. Then, she feels the tips of his fingers playing around her entrance, massaging, dipping inside, and coupling that with the wonderful suction of his mouth and his tongue’s ministrations, Betty thinks she might implode.

“Up front,” she urges, “A little inside.” He understands, pressing two fingers up inside her, not all the way, and placing pressure against. Exactly. The. Right. Spot.

She doesn’t register the noises coming from her mouth, the headboard creaking as she wrenches on it. Her hips jolt forward, a broken-off sob gets loose, and then it hits her.

He lets her ride it out, groaning in response to her cries. She feels one final lingering slide of his tongue, like he means to catch the last of it. He places a small kiss against her sex, against the inside of her trembling thigh, lazily kneading her breast as she regains her bearings.

Betty falls to the side and curls into a ball. Only for a moment, breathing into the baffling flood of endorphins until the echoing pulse of pleasure in lower belly settles down. She feels his palm smoothing along her shoulder, a soothing motion that calms her. 

“Too intense this time?” he wonders quietly.

She unfurls herself and turns toward him. He has her slick on his chin, and a phantom zing thrills up from the base of her spine when he licks it off.

At first, she doesn’t know what he means by _this time_. He didn’t go down on her their first time. Glossing over it, she shakes her head. “No, but I should believe you next time you say you’re serious about something.”

He practically glows with validation, hiding his smug grin by reaching over the side of the bed to grab a tissue and wipe his face. The motion lets her see that he unzipped his jeans to relieve some of the noticeable pressure. She makes a mental note that Jughead Jones gets off on giving head. Giving great head, she corrects.

As he rolls onto his back again, Betty takes the opportunity to retrieve a condom from the bedside table. He bug-eyes, and she gives him a questioning look.

“Don’t you need a moment?” he inquires. He was like that then, too, polite to the point of borderline annoying.

She tears the foil wrapper. “I’m good. Are you good?” Because maybe he isn’t asking just for her.

His Adam’s apple bobs nervously, some of that earlier confidence waning. The look he gives her brings with it a surge of nostalgia. It makes her chest hurt, like he keeps flipping a coin in his thoughts without calling it, so any outcome has no meaning, produces no action. She knows because she keeps flipping the same coin and never calls it, too, never asks the right question.

They tiptoed toward each other that night, playing this quiet, almost tender game of chicken. Betty ignored the cramp beneath her sternum and simply let herself enjoy him, the experience, the safety of the boundaries around it that neither ever ventured to cross. She feels herself coming full circle again, bounding right up to the same boundary line and stalling. She wonders if she just reached out and touched it, would it crumble like nothing, disintegrate like a mirage, like it was never there, and she merely imagined it.

“I’m good,” he finally gets out, reaching a private conclusion she could only guess at.

Once he kicks off his jeans and jockeys, Betty straddles him again. He suddenly sits up, curling his hands around her waist that instantly makes her move toward him. His face is much closer now, and it makes her a little nervous.

Sensing her discomfort, he strokes her hipbones and reasons, “I like kissing you.”

The admission makes her feel floaty, but she tells herself not to read too much into it. She likes it, too, kissing him, but this position feels even more intimate than when her thighs were wrapped around his head, and that is just too ridiculous to unpack now.

“Unless you don’t like the taste,” he supposes, realizing his error.

She puts his concerns to rest by sealing her mouth over his own. As soon as she tastes herself on his tongue, she knows she is very good.

He helps her roll the condom on and presses a hand to mattress to steady them as she lowers herself. Settling in his lap, she sees his eyes are closed, a wrinkle of concentration in the center of his brow.

Betty presses her index finger to the adorable crease and whispers, “Don’t give yourself a headache.”

He _mmhms_ but stays like that for a beat. In a few seconds, he opens his eyes, appearing to resolve himself. “Come here,” he orders roughly, guiding her by the back of her neck to kiss her.

She likes the pressure of his hand against the nape of her neck, and moans as his mouth moves down her jawline. It prompts her to start moving, rolling her hips against him. He groans in response, nipping the soft skin beneath her ear. She loved that back then, too, that he vocalized his pleasure. After having so many partners that didn’t, she appreciates having the clues now.

Betty finds it silly to expect it to hurt, like the first time, and wonders if it feels unbelievably good because she anticipated the opposite. Her fingers sinking into his hair, her other arm braced along his shoulder to ground herself, she enjoys the slide and fullness. Her favorite part has always been finding the right rhythm and angle, the heady relief when she gets it.

“Christ, Betty,” he says like a curse, grabbing her hair by the base of her head.

“What?” she returns defensively, nails digging in beneath the wing of his shoulder blade.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he growls against her mouth.

_No_ , she laments in her head. _Don’t say that_. She kisses him to stall any further confessions, anything else that might make her hope for more.

She feels the tension in her gut building again, her ankles digging into his lower back, toes curling. She moves to bury her face in his shoulder, but he holds her in place, studying her again.

“What are you doing?” she complains, accidentally tugging too hard on his hair that he winces.

“I want to see,” he intimates, his tone low, a little strained.

She can barely keep her eyes open, but she doesn’t want him to see. He already got a close-up of one of the most intimate parts of her. It is a loss of control that she loathes, but there are some things that haven’t faded in seven years. One being the unspoken trust between them. Now, he asks for more, and it hurts. It scares her. “I already did it before,” she contends.

He smirks, and she nearly smothers it with another kiss. He can always win her over with that smile that manages to be self-conscious and arrogant at the same time. “Yeah, but I didn’t see,” he argues back.

She feels his other hand negotiate its way between them, and then his fingertips slipping up against where he moves in and out of her. It takes bare seconds before he finds it, and she hates him because it feels like there aren’t seven years between them now.

She uses him for balance, rolling against him with more urgency now. He is going to see it, and there’s not a damned thing she can do about it.

His jaw goes slack, either from awe or because he is close, too, but Betty is too far gone to discern which one as it happens again. _Twice_. The one thought that gets through. _Twice_ , and she is already thinking about the next one, both dreading and craving it. She knows she is gone, and it is regret and completion like oil and water in her mind. He is a bastard, but she asked for it.

He comes while she seems stuck in the middle of her own. His fingers dig into her ass to drag her back and forth, drawing out another one that is too good to be true. _Bastard_ , she keeps thinking, fondly, resentfully. 

She falls to the side again, curling away and clamping her thighs around her hands. It is the only thing she can do when she comes like that, when it is too overwhelming. Nothing to do but fold up and soak in it.

She feels the mattress shift behind her, the sound of him grabbing a tissue, and then he falls back next to her. He resumes that soothing motion over her shoulders that makes her feel even better, a comfort and almost like a job well done. “I’ve wanted to see that for a long time,” he confesses, so low she doesn’t know if she caught all of it.

Unfolding, she lays out, turning her head to regard him, all sex hair and post-climax sedateness. “You had your chance back then,” she tells him, and she thinks he can see she means more than a good orgasm.

He smiles, a tinge of regret in that ephemeral dimple reappearing above his eyebrow. “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing back then,” he admits.

“Jughead,” she starts, but he stops her, tracing his index finger down the curve of her cheekbone, smoothing the soft round of her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger.

The vulnerability on his face creates a hot pinch behind her eyes, and just like that it’s heavy, a phantom weight pinning them to the bed. She is terrified of what he might say, but her body feels too good to run away, lulled by the hazy glow of leftover endorphins softening her panic.

“You were the girl that was gonna go to college and be a big shot reporter or journalist or, I guess, cop hero now,” he tells her, his eyes tracing her features as if cataloguing each one, the changes, the baby fat that’s turned to the angles and sharpness she recognizes in her mother’s face now.

“And I was the kid with my head up my ass,” he continues, smiling at his folly. “That needed Fred to point me in the right direction. Really any direction.”

She agrees the timing had been bad then, but now. They will be in the same city, more reachable, definitely available. She wonders now if it would always lead here, if she just needed to be patient and eventually their circles would intersect once again, longer this time, something more permanent this time. Was she that lucky?

He tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, pressing his tongue hard against his molars. “Now, you’re here,” he says, tightness of emotion in his voice. “Exactly as amazing as I thought you would be.”

Her confession lingers on her tongue, begging at the tip to be let go, but then her phone buzzes at that moment, and she sees the tension dissolve, sees him withdraw back inside himself. She wants to chase it, grab hold of it and shake the truth out of him, but her phone vibrates again.

He rolls onto his back, sighing up at the ceiling, and Betty leans over to check her messages. It is Veronica telling her they will be at Delmonico’s within the hour.

“I actually came over to tell you we’re having dinner at Delmonico’s with Veronica and Archie and Mary,” she confesses, sitting up against the backboard with her phone in her lap. “That was Veronica saying they’re almost back from the airport.”

He chuckles, clasping his hands behind his head, comfortable in his nakedness in a way he was not before. That companionable ease settles in again like a curse.

“Get a little sidetracked?” he jokes, glancing at her sidelong.

She thinks, _it’s now or never_. Like so many opportunities in her life and all the sacrifices she made for them, she knew most only came around once. That was the price of success, the potential risk of failure, the missed moments like heavy remainders from the harsh equation of her life.

Unlocking her phone, she opens a new contact and offers it to Jughead. “You should put your number in my phone.”

He sits up abruptly, glancing at her phone and then her. “So, we can hook up again? Or the roommate thing?” She thinks she sees a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“Um, no,” she starts, and then considers maybe that is something he wants. She prays it isn’t because she has been in that limbo before, and it never lasted. “I mean, if that’s what you want,” she says, testing the waters.

He takes her phone, but he doesn’t punch in his number. “What do you want?” he ventures timidly, and she cannot stand it anymore.

Betty knows what she wants. Though she hoped it would, it never changed in seven years. In the end, it doesn’t matter either way what he wants, whether it would disappoint her or make her life. The only thing that would save her from regret was honesty. “Coffee?” she tries. “Maybe dinner eventually?”

His smile makes and breaks her heart every time. “Are we doing this backwards?” he muses, shaking his head and staring at the blank contact, the blinking cursor in the entry for first name.

“Look at me, Jughead,” she beckons, cupping his jaw.

His gaze meets hers, and she sees her own. There is every one of her emotions reflected back at her in perfect mimicry. Wasn’t that what held her to him for so many years, the memory that for a single night she knew him when they were too young to understand what it meant, that there was something in her that resonated so completely with him. She sees that now, that it wasn’t just her. It makes the next bit come easy. Suddenly, it is the easiest decision she has ever made.

“I’m asking you out on a proper date,” she says, trying not to let her voice shake, trying to voice how much she means it. Then she adds most politely, as a good Cooper should, “Please.”

* * *

There are snowflakes on her stocking cap, and her cheeks are flushed from more than the cold, because before they walked into the restaurant, Jughead pushed her up against the brick wall outside and kissed her, effectively scrambling her thoughts.

When she asked him why, he smiled and told her, “I felt like it.” With a tingle in her lips and a warmth in her belly, she almost said he could feel like it anytime. She doesn’t think she would every say no.

So that is how she comes to the dinner table, with that kiss swimming around in her thoughts and all the promises attached to it. Betty hugs Mary for the first time in years and thinks about the sequence of numbers in her phone she has already memorized. She grins into the fond pat on her cheek and remembers his low whisper against her lips when he said _it’s a date_. She thinks about the time and the place she will see him again typed into her calendar and graciously accepts a glass of white wine from Archie.

Veronica flashes the engagement ring across the table, and Betty audibly gasps, reaching across the table to admire it, though she has seen it a million times before. It is a modest but lovely ring that had been in the Andrews family for three generations, since the founding of Riverdale.

“He asked his morning,” Veronica admits. “But, we wanted to wait until our official celebratory dinner to announce it.”

“Also, to have a ring to show,” Mary adds, gazing on her only son and his new fiancé with tenderness and joy.

Jughead is the first to raise a glass to the happy couple. He jokes amiably about being out of a roommate, but there is nothing but love and good will when he wishes two of their oldest friends the best.

Archie makes a quick aside asking him to be his best man, and Veronica perks up at that and launches into a rant about Betty being her maid of honor. While all Jughead and Archie exchange is a simple nod, Veronica is already planning the bachelorette party, dress shopping, the works, and just as Betty begins to feel overwhelmed, she feels Jughead’s hand on her thigh, his thumb stroking like a gentle reassurance.

Betty ignores the wide-eyed but pleasant surprise around the table when she leans over and plants a kiss to the corner of his mouth. She smiles as he leans into it, not an ounce of hesitation on his end, and then she guesses, maybe, it was always supposed to happen this way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed it, and I would be so grateful for any feedback! 🥰

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for not having the second chapter done, but I really wanted to get the first out before the 31st. The follow-up is not far behind, I promise. Thank you for reading and a happy New Year to you all! I would be grateful for any feedback <3


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